Ringgold looking to purchase new vehicles for depleted police fleet
The city of Ringgold recently approved the purchase of three new vehicles for its police department in order to upgrade its recently depleted fleet.
A string of recent bad luck has caused the police department to be down three vehicles at the moment. One vehicle was damaged and deemed a total loss back in April. Then, on June 5, a motorist struck two more cars that were working an incident along I-75.
Chief Dan Bilbrey and Assistant Chief Chad Cardin recently presented City Manager Dan Wright with a plan to purchase three new vehicles in a cost-effective manner, a plan that was ultimately approved during a July 24 council meeting.
“We’ve lost three vehicles in the past few months due to accidents,” Wright said. “They (the police department) can purchase three 2018 vehicles with forfeiture money, reimbursement funds from the three that were totaled out, and there’s also some police contributions and donations that they have.”
In June, the city had surplus items on hand that garnered a little more than $13,000 after being sold via govdeals. com. The council approved allocating those funds to the police vehicle effort as well.
“Overall, they are about $6,200 shy of being able to purchase the three vehicles,” Wright explained to the council. “For them to get three new cars... they badly need them right now.”
Councilman Terry Crawford motioned to approve allocating an additional $6,500 to the effort to make up the difference.
“Let’s do $6,500 to cover it, and if they need more, they can let us know,” Crawford said.
“That’s good with me,” Mayor Nick Millwood added.
Wright said it would take time to get the vehicle purchase finalized and get the cars properly outfitted with the necessary equipment and paint.