Rogers council approves buying patrol Tahoes

Rogers City Hall, April 11, 2016
Rogers City Hall, April 11, 2016

ROGERS -- The Police Department can buy and rent several new vehicles and other equipment following unanimous City Council votes Tuesday.

The department will buy 11 Chevrolet Tahoe for patrol from Superior Chevrolet of Siloam Springs for more than $512,000 and rent five vehicles from Enterprise Fleet Management for $35,000 total.

Other action

Rogers’ City Council met Tuesday and approved:

• Rezoning 4707 W. Oak St. from agricultural to residential single family.

• Tabling a rezoning at 604 N. Third St. from residential duplex to the neighborhood transition zoning district.

Source: Staff Report

The department originally budgeted $525,000 to buy the Tahoes, Police Chief Hayes Minor said.

The rental vehicles are for undercover use in the department's narcotics unit, he said.

"This is a new program for us this year," Minor said of the rental vehicles.

Minor said he will continue the program next year if it goes well.

The department also will buy 12 new stun guns for $25,000 from an Arizona-based company, Axon.

The new stun guns are to replace old ones in the department that will soon have expired warranties, Minor said. He said the stun guns have five-year warranties, and if something were to go wrong while an officer was using a stun gun more than five years old, the department would lose a lawsuit if it were sued.

The City Council also unanimously gave the city's Legal Department the green light to destroy some of its records that are already audited and a minimum of four or seven years old, depending on the type of record.

"We're trying to make sure that we stick with our records retention policy and get rid of those records that are past the seven-year mark," staff attorney Bonnie Bridges said.

Examples of records to be destroyed include canceled checks, bank statements, copies of citations, served arrest warrants and completed case files, according to the resolution approved Tuesday.

The department is looking to clean its file cabinets once a year, Bridges said. The records will be shredded, and there shouldn't be any problems with confidentiality, she said.

Bridges said she was in the baby steps of finding a way for the Legal Department to keep all its records online.

"I really hope that we get paperless in the next two years because IT [information technology] was telling me that we are the most paper-heavy department at the city for the amount of employees we have," she said.

Bridges said the Legal Department often has to call the IT Department because of scanner or printer problems, which she said was an inefficient use of both departments' time.

NW News on 01/23/2019

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