Aldermen approve nine-vehicle lease plan; quoted rent nears $9,800 a month

Starkville’s Board of Aldermen authorized leases for seven police SUVs and two fire pickups through Enterprise Fleet Management as part of its October 20 consent action. The Mississippi city’s vote resolves the approval question left open in our earlier report on the nine-vehicle lease proposal.⁠[1][2][3][4]

The board approved the official agenda, which expressly included consented items; the vehicle request appeared under Finance and Administration and was read aloud among those items. The available records do not establish whether final leases have been signed or when the vehicles will be delivered.⁠[1][2][3][4][5]

The plan calls for seven 2027 Dodge Durango Pursuit vehicles and two 2027 RAM 1500 4x4 pickups. Down payments total $60,845. The attached 60-month quotes list rent of $1,068.92 per police vehicle and $1,156.99 per fire pickup—$9,796.42 a month combined. At those rates, down payments plus five years of rent would total about $648,630, before termination charges and other costs.⁠[4]

A small discrepancy remains in the paperwork: the city’s summary lists the fire rental at $1,156.44 per pickup, 55 cents below the attached quote. The calculation above uses the higher quoted rate; the difference across two pickups over five years is $66.⁠[4]

Both quotes list a $400 lease-termination service charge per vehicle. The fire quote also lists $210 per pickup in separately billed administration and estimated transport fees. Those charges are outside the down-payment-and-rent calculation.⁠[4]

The quoted payments are not necessarily the final rates. Both quotes say the monthly lease charge will adjust to the interest rate at delivery, subject to a floor, and require the city to maintain insurance until the vehicles are sold. The roughly $649,000 figure is therefore a payment benchmark—not the city’s complete eventual cost.⁠[4]