The City of Visalia, Calif., approved the purchase of 10 Dodge Chargers for its patrol fleet at a cost of $522,720. City Council approved the purchase from an Anaheim, Calif., dealership at a July 15 meeting, Visalia’s city clerk confirmed.

Fleet Maintenance evaluated the vehicles being replaced and stated that these vehicles had exceeded their useful lifecycles. Funding for the purchases comes from the Vehicle Replacement Fund.

The City has a local preference policy for purchases, which gives a local vendor with a bid within 5% of the lowest bid three days to match or beat the low bid. The agenda item states that the local vendor chose not to participate in the bid process because it was unable to match the pricing of the larger Anaheim dealership. Anaheim is more than 200 miles away from Visalia.

The Visalia Times-Delta reported that the police department fleet has 106 marked vehicles; 44 are Chargers and 62 are Ford Crown Victoria police vehicles.