By KALIN KROHE
Panhandle Post

At Tuesday night’s regular meeting, the Alliance City Council approved the purchase of two pickups for the water and street department.

The total cost for the pickups is $65,129. This price is below the budgeted authority. They will be purchased locally at Cover-Jones Motor Co.

“We’re replacing a 1999 Chevy with 78,000 miles and 2012 vehicle with 109,000 miles,” Mayor Mike Dafney said.

Alliance City Manager Rick Kuckkahn said the city will try to put those vehicles into departments that don’t have as much need for reliability. He said normally the vehicles will go to the parks and recreation department.

Councilman Earl Jones said, “78,000 miles is a long ways because I don’t own any vehicles with that low mileage.”

Kuckkahn replied, saying, “We’ll use year or date when they get that old. There’s just things that start going wrong with them that you can’t predict. Again, we try to move the less reliable vehicles down the ladder.”

In other business, the council approved a proclamation for Lutheran Schools Week — Jan. 27 through Feb. 2.

Alliance council members also heard a first reading regarding policy on unarmed sports. At the Dec. 18 meeting, Larry Bolinger made a request regarding proposed new language to the unarmed sports section of the municipal code. City staff has had legal counsel review the code compared to the State statues.  The ordinance was approved on first reading.

The Alliance Airport will have a 12.47 kV distribution electric line rebuilt at a cost of $366,175. The city is providing the major portion of the materials such as poles, cross-arms, line, and transformers.

You can hear the full Alliance City Council meeting audio below.