VALDOSTA – The City of Valdosta is still dealing with the effects of COVID-19 on the purchase of vehicles as one purchase was more expensive than budgeted.

Valdosta City Council considered this purchase, a grapple truck for the public works department, for $204,845.65 from Hol-Mac Corp which comes in $44,845 more than the $160,000 budget.

Councilmember At-Large Ben Norton asked if this was the only bid. Richard Hardy, deputy city manager of operations, said this was the only vendor that wanted to bid.

“We thought about postponing but moving down the roadway, we didn’t know whether that price was going to come down,” Hardy said.

Hardy said the increase in price, referencing the semiconductor chip shortage, is due to the vehicle’s availability and changes within the vehicle’s production.

Hopefully, they won’t have to buy another grapple truck, he said.

As the increase in price was alarming, the request itself, which is funded by SPLOSTVIII, stated the cost would be spread over other public works projects.

A similar over-budgeting issue was found with a request to purchase a jet vacuum sewer truck for the utilities department.

It only had one bidder as well, Adams Equipment, at $424,973 – $29,973 over-budget.

The truck is set to replace an older vehicle with high-maintenance costs and is expected to be paid by using SPLOSTVII.

City Council approved the purchase sans council members Sandra Tooley, Tim Carroll and Andy Gibbs.

City Manager Mark Barber also offered some insight on ways to offset the increase of both requests, offering up the American Rescue Fund Act money.

The city could take the overages and pay it with the ARPA funding, keeping things within budget, Barber said, referencing this is only an option.

Barber said they received the full regulations for ARPA funding during the third week of January. City Council is expecting to detail its usage during its summit March 18-19.

City Council dealt with a similar issue at the Dec. 9 meeting when it discussed an overly expensive purchase of five pursuit vehicles at $197,000 for the Valdosta Police Department.

The purchase left $94,500 in the budget for the police department. The full budget, $291,500, was set for the purchase of 11 pursuit vehicles, leaving the department in a hard spot after the purchase.

Initially, no bids were returned for the VPD vehicles since many manufacturers, Dodge specifically, are facing a crisis in production given the semiconductor chip shortage.

City Council members heavily discussed the CARES/ARPA funding then, wondering what the hold up was with the regulations for it.

As Hardy presented then, the City of Valdosta, alongside other Georgia municipalities, were in a state of confusion: they didn’t know anything. Now, cities have the regulations and are raring to go.

Barber said the city has about $16.3 million of this funding, half of which was received in June 2021. He said about $3 million was spent in yielding city employees their premium pay for working through the pandemic.

“The total cost for our employees was $5 million, but we took that from another pot of money to make sure we were in the spirit and intent of ARPA regulations,” Barber said.

Reading the full regulations now, Barber said the city made the right decision.

District 3 Councilman Sonny Vickers offered a suggestion on how to use the funding, but Barber responded saying all the council members will get input on its usage during the March summit.