By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The wait for new patrol vehicles for the Buchanan County Sheriff's Department will be a little longer.
Sheriff Bill Puett says he was at risk of having the order canceled if his office didn't remove some things from the order that were hard for the company building the vehicles to get.
Puett remains hopeful his office will still be able to get the five ordered patrol vehicles
"We had to make that hard decision to say, ok well we'll delete these things and Kim Hartman who's the purchasing agent for the county she does a really great job working with bids and those types of things," Puett tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "And she had gotten with us and the folks that we were purchasing them through had reached out and we continued to check on things we had ordered."
While the office awaits the vehicles ordered back in October for this year, Puett says it has also put in an order for six patrol vehicles next year, with orders for next year’s vehicles closing soon.
"Cause then they shut that off, and they're really not sure when those will be built and they're really not sure of the price," Puett says. "And that's a little, I had referred to we're kind of just stabbing in the dark here the other day when I was talking with Kim about this, and we just don't know."
Puett says he doesn't know when, or even if, his office will get the vehicles, or if something else will pop up like this year that would cause a cancellation on the order.
Puett says even without the vehicles ordered for this year and the difficulty to get patrol vehicles, his office is still continuing to work hard to serve the community without any reduction of services
"We feel pretty strongly about that to make sure we serve our citizens and have them taken care of without any reduction and if that means putting money in older vehicles until we get replacements, then that's just what we're going to have to do," Puett explains. "And we've been fairly fortunate."
Puett says the supply chain issues are also affecting repairs being made to department vehicles.
Currently the Sheriff's office is awaiting repairs on a car that was struck by a deer earlier this month.