Sheriff’s Department may lease new vehicles if price is right

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — The Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department’s fleet of vehicles for its full-time deputies is showing its age. In addition, two spare cruisers used by part-timers are in worse shape.
    So Chief Deputy Bob Young made a brief presentation at the Sept. 16 county commissioners’ meeting on the advantages of leasing new vehicles instead of buying them outright.

    Young said that unlike a regular consumer contract, vehicles leased to law enforcement agencies don’t have a mileage cap. “With Ford Credit Company, you make a down payment and three or four yearly payments. Then at the end of the lease, you buy the vehicle for a dollar,” Young said.
    The chief deputy said that out of the department’s seven “front-line vehicles, only two of them are in good shape — and those are 2013s.” Young added that it’s gotten to the point “where some of them are just not expensive to maintain, but unreliable. And when front-line vehicles become unreliable, safety becomes a big issue.”
    For a number of years the Sheriff’s Department replaced a few vehicles at a time on a rotating basis. But when tax dollars became tight, they kept the cruisers for a longer time, Young explained. “We budgeted $15,000 for maintenance. As of August, we’ve already spent $13,871 out of that account,” he added.
    Young suggested replacing all seven front-line vehicles for an estimated $175,000 either by purchasing or leasing them and said that there is already $56,000 in the vehicle replacement account. He estimated that it would cost $30,000-$35,000 per year for four years to upgrade the seven vehicles for the full-time deputies.
    Commissioner Fred Trask said that his only concern was “replacing all seven at once. I’d like to see us sit down and go over the details. It’s kind of hard for us to make a decision today.” Young agreed and said that his presentation was basically informational, since “it’s a whole new concept for us. So we need to think about it.”
    The chief deputy also said that he preferred that the department buy or lease pick-up trucks “because of some of the places we have to go … A car just doesn’t cut it.” He also said that pickups are cheaper to maintain and hold their resale value. “A pickup with 100,000 miles on it still has some value,” Young said.
    James Annis, chairman of the commissioners, said that the proposal should go to the county budget committee “because they’re the ones who will make the recommendation.”
    The commissioners decided to schedule a special meeting with Young and possibly some representatives from auto dealers or leasing companies before the next scheduled county commissioner’s meeting on Oct. 7.
    Commissioners also decided to revisit a request to plow a portion of County Road in Orneville Township after receiving a petition from residents in the Boyd Lake area. A public hearing was held earlier this year about the issue in Milo, but no one attended except the commissioners.
    Trask said that while the hearing was posted “in accordance with the law, many people in Orneville don’t get the papers from up this way … I think we should revisit their request and do some homework on it.”
Commissioners also noted that part of the road is already plowed so that residents have access to the dump, so the request only involves around one mile of roadway.