Council will spend $110,000 to upgrade dept.’s aging fleet
BY SUE M. MORGAN
Staff Writer
OLD BRIDGE — The township’s police department will soon be getting four new police cruisers for its aging fleet.
By a unanimous vote on Feb. 23, the Township Council approved the purchase of four new vehicles for a total price of $110,000 from Winner Ford in Cherry Hill, Camden County.
That price includes the sales tax and state registration for each vehicle as well as the sirens and lighted bars, according to acting Business Administrator Himanshu Shah.
The vehicles will be paid for out of a trust fund accumulated over several years from police working roadway traffic-control jobs for outside contractors, Shah said.
Those contractors, which include Verizon and Jersey Central Power & Light Co., pay the township for those road jobs and the accompanying wear and tear on the vehicle used by an officer assigned to the job, explained Mayor Jim Phillips, a Democrat.
Patrol officers have put a lot of mileage on the cruisers, and Police Chief Thomas Collow has been begging the administration for new vehicles, according to Phillips, who is also currently the acting director of police.
"The chief says he desperately needs them," Phillips said.
The vehicles will be purchased by the township through a state contract, Shah said. Winner Ford holds that contract and, as a result, fulfills all purchase orders, he added.
"We can’t just go through any dealer," Shah explained. "Winner [Ford] won the bid."
The township did explore the option of leasing the vehicles, Shah said in reply to a question raised by Ward 6 Councilwoman Lucille Panos. However, leasing is not practical because the mileage incurred by the average police cruiser would exceed what is permitted in a lease agreement, Shah said.
Speaking during the hearing, former Councilman Lawrence Redmond, also a Democrat, expressed surprise that the Phillips administration, which has been in office since Jan. 1, was moving to purchase the vehicles.
Phillips’ Republican predecessor, former Mayor Barbara Cannon, did not include funding for any new police vehicles in her 2003 municipal budget.
At that time, Cannon blamed increasing municipal expenses and declining revenues as the reason why she could not fund that purchase or hire more police officers.
"[Cannon’s administration] never had any money for cars," Redmond said. "It was always gloom and doom."
Cannon’s original $45.3 million municipal budget for fiscal year 2004 did include $55,000 for the purchase of police vehicles. That budget included a 3-cent tax increase that would have raised the municipal tax rate to 76 cents for each $100 of assessed of valuation.
On Dec. 15, the Democratic-controlled council, which then included Redmond in his last days in office, approved a revised $44.8 million municipal budget with a zero tax increase. That budget kept municipal taxes at 73 cents for each $100 of assessed valuation.
The reductions were made possible in part by nearly $500,000 in cost-cutting amendments put together by the council that consolidated some township jobs, outsourced other positions, and left vacancies unfilled, according to documents from the township’s finance department.
No police vehicles have been purchased by the township administration since mid-2002.
Although no funding for police vehicles was included in Cannon’s $43.2 million municipal budget for that fiscal year, the council did manage to transfer $150,000 from some underused accounts to purchase the vehicles during that summer.