New police units were ordered back in January for the Pine Bluff Police Department, but there was never an ordinance passed by the City Council to purchase them.
With the arrival of the 13 units, an emergency Public Safety Committee meeting was held Friday to pass an ordinance with a "do pass" to the full council waiving competitive selection and authorizing an agreement with Smart Chrysler Dodge to acquire the vehicles for the Police Department.
The total cost of the vehicles is $420,123, which would be paid for using money in an unused salaries account and a motor vehicle account that was paid off and was no longer needed.
"There was some miscommunication that happened between the chief and the mayor, and the vehicles were ordered," said Glen Brown Jr., chairman of the Public Safety Committee. "They're here so at this point we have to go ahead and take care of that."
Assistant Chief of Police Kelvin Hadley said the vehicles are needed for service officers who are in patrol and that the purchases put the department closer to achieving a take-home vehicle for officers who live within the city limits.
According to Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington, approximately 45 vehicles are needed to accommodate the Police Department's take-home need.
"Some of the officers, not necessarily patrol, and some of the officers in some of the divisions already are carrying home cars on a daily basis," Washington said.
According to Hadley, officers in the Investigative Division take their units home on a daily basis, but there are others who need that same option.
"There are some supervisors here that are in patrol that only drive those units," Hadley said. "Those are some of the ones I am definitely speaking about that should be able to take their units home also that live in the city limits just as well as the patrol officers."
Brown said he hopes to see that happen sometime this year.
"We've been talking about it for a while, so hopefully with these 13 vehicles that we are acquiring, maybe we can at least start putting some officers, starting with some of our senior officers first," Brown said. "If we don't have enough vehicles right now, then later on as we get more vehicles we'll just incorporate more."
Council member Steven Mays asked about the inventory of units that were not in service.
"We're buying cars quite a bit. You go to the lot, and you see double the cars out there," Mays said. "Maybe we need to look at condensing some of those cars on the lot and getting them up running for the local city limits."
Washington said that was discussed Monday with the Pine Bluff Police Department and it was determined that the cars that were disabled to the point of no repair would be auctioned off.
"They had pretty much removed parts from cars that they could use to help put other cars in service," said Washington, who added that officials will be going to every city department head to retrieve non-operational vehicles.
Two separate auctions will have to take place -- a public safety auction and a non-municipal vehicle auction.
On Friday, the motion passed to send the ordinance to the full City Council with a "do-pass" recommendation.