City Of Nashville Approves Purchase Of Squad Car, Wheel Loader

By Alex Haglund

    The Nashville City Council got their checkbook out, figuratively speaking, as they approved two large purchases – a new police vehicle and a compact wheel loader – at the second meeting for the month of September, held on the evening of Thursday, September 20.

The police vehicle, a Ford Interceptor, was first up. Interceptor is the name given to the police version of the car, and Police Chief Brian Fletcher said, “It’s just like mine. It’s like a Taurus.”

The vehicle will be purchased through Morrow Brothers, the only authorized dealer available for them. The city then alternates between using Meier’s and Holzhauer’s locally for to take delivery of police vehicles and receive the dock fees. This year, it’s Holzhauer’s turn.

The cost for the Interceptor is $32,010, and includes most of what the Police Department needs, said Fletcher, including a light bar and the cage.

Once the car is received, it will need to be striped and “I still need to purchase an interior camera, possibly a new radar,” Fletcher said.

As the City tries to purchase a new police vehicle once a year to replace an old one, the old vehicle being replaced will be a 2007 Chevrolet Impala, which will be sold at the next available auction.

The compact wheel loader will be purchased for the street department. The purchase had been discussed earlier in the year, but they decided against doing at this time. Since then though, there has been trouble with the city’s current wheel loader.

The hydraulic tank “is basically junk,” said council member Josh Fark.

The new wheel loader is a 2018 New Holland model, to be purchased through Diedrich Implement. The cost is $79,079.79.

“It sounds like this is the one we shouldn’t have waited on,” said councilor Terry Kozuszek before the motion was approved by the council. Along with the purchase, it also allows Schuette to act to repair, or if necessary, replace, the hydraulic tank on the current wheel loader, “because it will probably be after the first of the year before we would receive the new one,” said Fark.

Water and Sewer

The council revisited the Gardner Street culvert replacement first discussed at the earlier September meeting. The council had received three options from Haier Plumbing to replace the culvert, in concrete, a three pipe system, a two pipe system and a plastic segmented system.

The plastic option was dropped from consideration with councilor Doug Hargan saying, “Rich (Schuette) is not wild about that, Terry (Kozuszek) is not wild about it, and Blaine (Middleton) is not wild about it.”

With the concrete options, “we’re going to be set no matter what comes down the road,” Schuette said.

Currently, the sewer line for that area actually runs through the current culvert, making working on it far more labor intensive than it should be. “With the new one, the sewer line will actually run over the pipe,” said Middleton.

The two pipe system costs about $37,000 (these were estimates, not bids, because at this point, it’s just being approved to send it to city engineers Curry and Associates, and will be bid with a sewer line replacement near Zapp’s Garage at the eastern edge of town at a later meeting in order to save on mobilization costs).

“That’s about $6,000 more (than the three pipe system),” Hargan said, but “it sounds like that might be money well-spent”

Middleton also stated that fall hydrant flushing dates were coming up. Flushing will occur from September 24 through October 5, and will run from the north side of Nashville to the south.

The council also approved the purchase and installation of new heaters for the clarifying room at the water plant. The ones currently there are the original ones that were there when the building was built and Middleton said that they now keep breaking down and, “getting parts for them has gotten expensive.”

Middleton said that they had received quotes from two local businesses and that the lower bid came from J&R Appliances of Nashville. The cost will be $17,980 for four 400,000 BTU units, one for each corner of the room.
Having heaters in the room helps to keep the chemicals stored there at the proper temperature and consistency. Without them, those chemicals would start to thicken or gel as the temperatures drop in the winter.

Finance and Insurance

Kelly Sheridan included a draft of a proposed credit card use policy with each council member’s packets for the meeting, to be voted on at a future meeting.

“This is just an alternative way of paying for goods and services,” Sheridan said. “It’s not going to change anything else that we do, as far as purchasing policies that we have.”