Council approves city vehicle leasing proposal

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Jackson City Council met Tuesday morning for their regular monthly meeting.

The City Council discussed in great detail plans to upgrade their fleet of vehicles in an alternative way.

Instead of purchasing new vehicles each year, the council approved in an 8 to 1 vote, with Councilman Larry Lowrance voting no, to leasing a certain amount of vehicles each year, and selling the ones they replace.

It would include leasing the cars through Enterprise Fleet Management.

Ron Shultis, Chief of Staff for the City of Jackson, explains what they are doing this year.

“Then we move several, two items that you have approved in the budget for capital into the bond package is the plan,” Shultis said. “That frees up several hundred thousand dollars that we are going to use to pay for leasing approximately 65 vehicles for the rest of the fiscal year.”

The vehicles that will be replaced range from model years 1994 to 2011. The city will look at selling those vehicles.

Mayor Conger spoke with us after the meeting regarding some of the savings they predict this will provide.

“And then by streamlining what vehicles we have for departments, we’re not having a Chevy, GMC, Ford, Dodge all in one department. It is going to be one vehicle type. So our garage doesn’t have to have all these different types of replacement parts in there,” Mayor Conger said.

Mayor Conger also spoke more about the plan for this year’s leasing and what they voted on Tuesday morning.

“Replacing 65 existing vehicles and I think we’ll be downsizing some too,” Conger said. “So in that item three and four on new business was allowing the consignment and the sale. So the vehicles we’ll be downsizing and not using anymore, we’ll be able to sell those as well.”

Mayor Conger says this process will be reviewed every year to look at what they want to spend and what they have available to spend.

It was also stated in the meeting that as of September 30, the City had around $13.1 million in their fund balance.

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