ROCHELLE — The Rochelle Police Department is getting three new vehicles, but not without some questions from city council.

Commissioners approved the purchase of two new Dodge Chargers and one new four-wheel drive service pickup truck, following a 15-minute discussion and split vote on the matter.

The source of contention was the need for the pickup truck as its main purpose would be transportation of a portable scale that the council had previously stricken from the budget.

Over a year ago, the city council seated at that time agreed to remove the scale purchase from the police budget. The unit includes six scales weighing 55 pounds each that could be transported to the site to weigh trucks believed to be overweight.

“The thing that concerns me the most is we voted to take scales out of the budget, and because it was below the $20,000 threshold we still ended up buying them,” said councilman Tom McDermott. “If we are elected to give the city some direction… I’m not really keen on the concept if our direction is not liked then we just do whatever we want. That’s a peevish thing to me.”

City engineer Sam Tesreau addressed council alongside Rochelle Police Chief Eric Higby and explained on more than one occasion that truck drivers being pulled over for suspicion of their trucks being overweight are directed to the nearest scale.

According to Higby, the officers are attempting to enforce the legal weight limit on the city streets, but the practice of sending them to a scale is inconvenient.

“When the officers pull a truck over, he is now directing the truck back on our streets,” Tesreau said. “This came to the attention of the city manager [former city manager, Dave Plyman] and he didn’t understand why we had to take them over the streets, so the scales were purchased through the city’s overweight truck fund.”

Tesreau pointed to revenue the city brings in to help justify the purchase of the scales, saying he was aware of a ticket issued for overweight load of $12,000.

McDermott reiterated his stance, voicing disagreement with the scale purchase.

“At some point in time, the city manager, department heads, council… we have to decide who is going to run this city,” McDermott said, also bringing up the budget issue and the amount of time into the fiscal year. “This is going to take department heads, departments, city manager, council… we have to get our heads on straight or we’re doomed.”

Councilwoman Kate Shaw-Dickey added that the previous city manager is no longer employed with the city, and that these will be “things to discuss with the new city manager.”

Mayor Chet Olson reminded council the matter at hand was approving or denying the purchase of the police vehicles.

Councilman Bil Hayes suggested purchasing the truck and utilizing the scales to enforce maximum allowable weights from trucks, but not without mentioning first that since this has happened “under a different watch, we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Now that we have the scales, we use them, we make revenue from them, save our roads with them, and keep these overweight trucks off our streets,” Hayes said.

Councilman Don Burke discussed having further plans on scheduled replacement times for the police fleet and budgeting appropriately.

“The purpose of the [four-wheel drive pickup truck] is to be able to use the portable scales, and not have to run the trucks all over the roads… to be able to use what we have purchased,” Shaw-Dickey added.

Hayes made the motion to purchase the vehicles and Burke seconded the motion.

The purchase price includes the truck for $32,068 and two squad cars each for $26,108, from Prescott Ford, for a total of $84,284. This price does not include the installation of lighting, computers, radios, consoles or the exterior wrap and decals.

The motion passed 4-2 with both Tom McDermott and Dan McDermott voting no. Councilman John Bearrows was absent from Monday evening’s meeting.

“I feel that maybe the crew cab four-wheel drive to haul scales around that we voted to not buy might be a little extravagant, where an economical pickup might have done the same job,” said Dan McDermott after the meeting