By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Jackson Walker and Connor Ward, representatives from Enterprise Rental, addressed the Grayson City Council at the regularly scheduled April meeting concerning the continuance of the city’s rental agreement as well as the possibility of expanding said agreement. Currently Grayson has an agreement with Enterprise for their police department vehicles, and is considering going to a lease versus purchase program for other city vehicles.
The value of a lease versus purchase of a vehicle, as presented by Enterprise, is that a schedule of maintenance is covered under the lease agreement, as well as a trade in agreement where the company will assist in the resell of each vehicle at the end of the lease term, ideally yielding more money for the city to apply against the new lease. Under a standard purchase of the vehicle, the city would only have factory warranties and any individual dealership warranties, and no assistance to resell the vehicle when needed.
Conventional wisdom might consider that by leasing, the city would always be making payments as opposed to an outright purchase agreement terminating at the end of each loan; and this rationale is accurate to a point. However, Grayson Police Chief Tony Cantrell agreed that most police cruisers need to be replaced by the end of a standard loan anyway and are out of warranty with increased maintenance issues.
The council also continued their discussion on the proposed changes to the ordinance which governs mobile homes in the city limits. The proposed change concerns the roof pitch of any new mobile homes being brought into the city, with the existing ordinance stating that the roof pitch must be 4/12. Newer single wide mobile homes are manufactured with a 3/12 pitch, and in order to accommodate the 4/12 pitch ordinance must be redesigned at a significant cost to the consumer.
Single wide mobile homes are zoned for city Zone R3, and existing homes there will not be affected. The change accommodating the new roof pitch (3/12) would only apply to that zone. There was also discussion about changing other points of the zoning ordinance that covered how an existing mobile home could be replaced.
Currently, if a mobile home is removed and the owner wishes to replace it, the replacement home was required to be the exact dimensions as the one removed. This could prove challenging in instances where a mobile home was built at a certain dimension decades previously, and those specific build dimensions are no longer offered by a manufacturer. The council decided that further research was needed on the subject of the mobile home ordinance, and no vote was taken at the meeting.
Another zoning discussion involved the need to address a building in severe disrepair that had become a hazard. Currently there is no clear deed of ownership, but there are heirs to the property, and city attorney Jason Greer told council he would look into the matter to determine if there was an attorney representing the estate. The city is not legally permitted to clean up the property, without first condemning the property, unless the owner of the property gives permission.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
