EAST LIVERPOOL — The East Liverpool Police Department will be getting three new cruisers.

City council Monday night unanimously approved the purchase of three new cruisers at the request of Police Chief John Lane.

The three cruisers are being purchased through the Ohio Cooperative Purchasing Program with a financing arrangement with Lease Servicing Center DBA NCL Government Capital for $250,000 with five annual lease payments of $57,411.12 which covers the cost of the three cruisers and equipment for them.

Lane said the department is definitely in need of the new cruisers since the department’s fleet only has two cars that are newer than 2020 — one a 2022 and the other a 2023. All the other department vehicles are 2019 or older.

Lane said with the older cars there are more equipment costs from the need to repair or replace things that start wearing out on the cars.

He noted the cars are constantly being driven on roads that are not the best, which is hard on the vehicles.

Lane said the department probably won’t get rid of any of the older cruisers because those will be needed for spares in case any of the department’s vehicles do go down. He said two went down at the beginning of the year and he has several cars that have well over 100,000 miles, so spares will be needed.

Lane said he expects the purchase of the new cars to proceed quickly since it’s been something that he has been working on for some time. He said with Tri-State Ford being aware that the department was working on this, the dealer has been looking for cars and just waiting for the go-ahead to get them.

He said he believes that once everything is signed, they should be able to quickly take delivery of the new cruisers and get them to Halls Automotive to get them equipped and road ready.

Lane thanked the mayor and the administration and said Safety Service Director Bill Jones was a big help with getting the new cruisers. He also said that the Finance Committee headed by Council Member Brian Kerr was very helpful in finding a way to work around not using the Cannabis Tax Revenue Fund to fund the purchase.

“I thank council and the administration for getting this done,” Lane said.

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