By GRAHAM BROOKS / Staff Writer

HELENA–The city of Helena approved the expenditure of a new Chevrolet Tahoe for the Helena Police Department at the Monday, Sept. 14, Helena City Council meeting that will primarily be used for the new incoming police chief.

Helena Police Chief Doug Jones, who served the city of Helena for 34 years, announced his retirement last month and currently an interview process is being conducted to find his replacement.

“As we reallocate equipment and hire a new police chief, we want to obviously have a vehicle for our chief when they come on board,” said Helena Mayor Mark Hall. “One of the vehicles that we had when the current chief retired, we had to move that vehicle to an investigators position because the investigators vehicle engine is expiring and has over 280,000 miles on it.”

Hall said there is a need to replace one vehicle now and currently the city is in good financial shape to purchase a police package state vehicle that costs approximately $32,000.

Helena Councilman Mike Jones reiterated that the police department as a whole does a good job of managing the entire police fleet.

“Another note, we went through the entire police department unit plan and they’ve done a good job of managing the fleet,” said Jones. “There are still some of those vehicles that we have on the age-out plan that we were going to replace with some of the used Tahoe’s from Hoover that we had already approved from last year. These are two of those vehicles and we’re only asking for one tonight.”

No decision has been made yet on who the new Helena police chief will be.