Ann Arbor Authorizes Five Police Cars

Chronicle Staff — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 01:46:43 +0000

At its Feb. 22, 2011 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council approved the purchase of five police cars – Crown Victoria Police Interceptors – for $20,730 each, a total of $103,650. The purchase was made from the low bidder, Signature Ford in Owosso, Mich. The city of Ann Arbor selected from among the bids made under the cooperative bidding programs of the State of Michigan, Macomb County and Oakland County in an effort to leverage higher volume into lower cost. In this case the lowest bid came through Macomb County’s program.

The city’s fleet services does not generally use the age of a vehicle as an absolute metric to determine replacement. Instead, each vehicle is evaluated based on vehicle’s age, miles/hours of use, type of service, reliability, maintenance and repair cost, and general condition. Hours of use is considered an important metric, because much of the mileage a city vehicle sees is city driving, which causes more wear and tear on vehicles.

However, the vehicles being replaced with the purchase of the five patrol cars are not evaluated with the same process as other vehicles in the city’s fleet. Police union contracts require that vehicles used by their members not exceed 80,000 miles or 6 years, whichever comes first. The five vehicles to be replaced will exceed the contractual criteria in the next year.

This brief was filed from the boardroom in the Washtenaw County administration building, where the council is meeting due to renovations in the city hall building. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

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Ann Arbor Authorizes Five Police Cars