Marion to buy 2 vehicles
Staff writer
Marion City Council decided Monday, on one unanimous vote and one split vote, to purchase a new police car and a 1-ton pickup for public works.
Interim police chief Zach Hudlin asked council members to approve purchase of a salvaged squad car for up to $40,000.
He said he was looking at used cars in the 2021 to 2024 model range.
“They’re rebuilt,” Hudlin said. “They have been in a wreck.”
The last cruiser the city purchased also was rebuilt with a salvage title.
Hudlin said he was looking to spend up to $30,000 on a cruiser plus $10,000 for equipment from a Joplin dealer.
Council members unanimously favored Hudlin’s proposal, but member Tim Baxa opposed a proposal to buy a new one-ton pickup for the public works department.
Public works director Tim Makovec submitted bids from Midwest Motors for three pickups. Two were 2022 Chevrolet Silverado trucks with 31,813 and 74,634 miles on them, and a 2021 Silverado with 41,839 miles on it.
Interim city administrator Mark McAnarney said he thought buying a new truck would be better.
“If you’re going to hold it a long time, if it were my money, I’d buy a new one,” McAnarney said.
In answer to a question from Baxa, Makovec said the salesman, former police chief Clinton Jeffrey, had looked to see what used options could be found.
Council member Amy Smith agreed with McAnarney that buying a new pickup would be a better choice “since they don’t put hundreds of thousands of miles on it a year.”
Makovec said the pickup was needed to carry and tow heavy equipment that bogs down the three-quarter-ton pickup the department now has.
On another matter, council members unanimously voted to have engineer Darin Neufeld apply for a Kansas Department of Transportation grant to repave Main St. from Roosevelt to Thorp Sts.
The grant, targeting highways and streets that connect to them, would have no matching cost for the city.
Code inspector James Masters presented a proposed ordinance that he said would prevent people from living in campers on their property for longer than a week and prevent campers parked on private property from being where they can be seen from the street.
Masters said he had seen residences with more than one recreational vehicle or boat parked on the property.
Mayor Mike Powers asked about the ordinance’s goal.
“The goal is not to have people living in campers,” Masters said.
Powers said people sometimes park work trailers on property while a job is being completed.
He told Masters to take the proposed ordinance back to the city’s planning and zoning commission and come back to the council in two weeks.
The commission meets once a month, on the last Tuesday of the month.