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Aging Police Vehicles Topic at Thursdays Public Safety Meeting

August 8th, 2019

HORNELL, NY – Thursday mornings Board of Public Safety meeting was held in the conference room of the police/fire stations so the mayor and commissioners could do an inspection of vehicles and equipment immediately following the meeting.

Hornell Mayor John Buckley and Police Chief Ted Murray both agreed that the state of the police fleet is in need of upgrades. “We have some very old vehicles that have been aging rapidly and accumulating a lot of miles,” said Buckley, “and what we want to try and do is starting a lease program to obtain new vehicles.”

According to the mayor, historically the city has purchased their police vehicles and turned them over every other year or so and the problem with that is a certain rotation of cars keep getting the brunt of usage. “Unfortunately we are not like the sheriff’s Dept. where each deputy is assigned his own car and takes it home every night, our vehicles run around the clock 24/7 and maintenance gets expensive.”

Buckley stated that most municipalities are converting to leasing programs with the benefits being you can acquire more vehicles and spread out the workload for each vehicle. “Our police department does a great job, and for them to continue to provide us with that caliber of service we need to make sure they have the reliable vehicles/equipment to work with.”

In other news Police Chief Ted Murray made a recommendation that parking on Delaware Ave between River Street and Prindle Ave is limited to parking on one side of the street. According to Murray, parking congestion in that area has increased and it is nearly impossible to get an emergency vehicle through there when needed. Buckley and the commissioners agreed and the suggestion will now go before the Law and Ordinance committee.

And finally the board approved a Family Fun Day to be held at Veterans Park on September 8th from 1pm to 4pm. The event is sponsored by the Rotary Club and they are requesting police and fire equipment demonstrations, and possibly a medical helicopter landing on the ball field around 1:30pm. According to the request, they will have large tents set up and are expecting 250+ people.


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