PENDLETON — Pendleton Town Council approved more than $43,000 to purchase new cameras for police vehicles.
The 5-0 vote to buy the video equipment followed a discussion about purchasing a new fleet of vehicles for the police department.
“I trust our managers to do their research,” councilman Chad Wolfe said after Pendleton Police Captain Randy Sidwell presented his initial proposal for eight 2018 Ford Explorers to replace the town’s current Dodge Chargers, plus the addition of a Ford F-150 pickup truck.
Wolfe restated that sentiment after the pitch for new cameras, and he and other council members praised Sidwell’s due diligence on the deals.
The vehicle purchase is still a work in progress, but the council approved the purchase of the camera system after Sidwell described the current equipment.
Sidwell said the departments’s in-car cameras are 12 years old and failing, requiring increasing amounts of time and money to maintain.
He said the manufacturer of the system was bought out by a “foreign company,” making parts difficult to come by, and that technology has come a long way, with much better image quality and wireless internet-based backup of footage.
“There’s a lot of work behind the scenes” with the current system, such as downloading video, that makes the new purchase worthwhile, he said.
The town voted to use Local Option Income Tax funds for the purchase, money that is earmarked for public safety expenditures.
Council members also said it doesn’t make sense if the department will be buying new vehicles to transfer the old video system into the new cars.
Six of the town’s police cars are 2013 models, and two are 2008 models, Sidwell said.
The town is on a five-year replacement cycle.
Taking into account the trade-in values of existing cars, the cost to install police equipment and apply PPD graphics to the vehicle exteriors, and financing, the total cost of the nine vehicles would be an estimated $224,000, or just less than $45,000 per year for five years; this is about $10,000 more per year than the town has been paying for the current fleet.
Council members said they were pleased with the cost estimate, given the addition of a pickup truck and considering the officers will be getting larger vehicles that will better suit their equipment needs.
A $27,817 price tag for each Explorer “is pretty good,” councilwoman Jessica Smith said.
“Keep up the good work,” council president Bob Jones said.
In other business:
• The town approved the adoption of the fiscal plan and annexation ordinance for Foster Branch Ridge subdivision. The subdivision is located west of I-69 and is comprised of 15 homes on almost 22 acres. The annexation is voluntary and will add $2.2 million to the town’s assessed valuation of $186,872,064 once it’s finalized.
• The council discussed a potential community center project in Falls Park but took no action on it. Several council members restated their hopes to work with other local government entities — and at least one private partner, a hospital the council declined to name yet — to come up with a viable plan by the end of this year. The goal is to develop a community center that would improve the quality of life for residents of all ages.