Buda city leaders earlier this month approved the purchase of three new Buda Police Department vehicles that were approved within the city’s fiscal year 2017 budget.
The three new vehicles will cost roughly $22,700 per vehicle, which was approved by the Buda city council as part of the budget process in 2016.
“A lot of the time the cost of the equipment that goes into the police vehicle costs the same as the vehicle, but that is not the case for these vehicles since we can reuse equipment from the older vehicles,” Buda Police Chief Bo Kidd said, “We are only going to have to completely outfit one police car, which costs approximately $20,000.”
Kidd said that the department needed the three vehicles for a variety of reasons.
“One of the cars is a replacement due to it being totaled in an accident, one of the cars is replacing a patrol car that had well over 100,000 miles on it and the third car is going to be added to the fleet for a new officer,” Kidd said.
Kidd said that one of the vehicles would replace a cruiser that was involved in a collision on Sept. 1, 2016 on the west access of Main Street.
Kidd said officer Freddy Erdman was traveling with his lights and sirens en route to a call when a truck that was in his blind spot crashed into him, causing the vehicle to be totaled and Erdman to be injured.
“Freddy is now on light duty, but he’s still recovering,” Kidd said.
Kidd said the approval of the three new patrol vehicles would give the department six total vehicles, with two officers sharing each patrol car. Currently Buda has 12 full or part time police officers on the force.
He added the vehicles rotate with each shift, which lasts the course of a 12-hour period and that general fleet maintenance is performed in-house, outside of large repairs, based on officer feedback from their inspection of police vehicles before every shift.
Kidd said delivery of the new patrol cars would take 90 days.
