By Mary Smith

news@vindy.com

MINERAL RIDGE

Weathersfield Township trustees said the $733,000 multipurpose emergency-response vehicle has arrived and will be jointly owned by the township, McDonald and Niles.

The Mine Resistant Ambush Vehicle — MRAP — was obtained through a 100 percent federal grant that Niles applied for on behalf of all three communities.

The three communities paid for the transport of the vehicle from Texas, which cost $6,500.

The vehicle will be used by a joint police Special Response Team, which is in place and has police officers from McDonald, Niles and Weathersfield. Its use is for entry or extraction of team personnel from what are known as “hot zones.”

Hot zones are when officers or others are being fired upon, or in various rescue scenarios of injured personnel or of citizens from severe weather conditions such as flooding or in other cases in which the endangered are in locations that are difficult to access.

The vehicle can be used to deliver safety forces to a hot zone more safely than in other types of vehicles.

The vehicles are designed by the military, and are used on the battlefield.

In other business Tuesday, trustees thanked voters for approving the renewal of a police levy first passed in 1981. Plans are to add another police officer to bring the department’s strength to nine. Full-strength would be 11 officers, said township Administrator David Rouan.

Trustees authorized Rouan to contract for grant-writing services with Charles L. Litton of McDonald & Harden of Warren.

Trustees want to apply for a fiscal year U.S. Department of Justice 2014 COPS Hiring program grant.

Litton’s fee is $2,700, and the grant would provide up to 75 percent of the approved entry-level salaries and fringe benefits of full-time officers for a 36-month grant period with a minimum a 25 percent local share and a maximum federal share of $125,000 per officer.

At the end of the three-year period, the officers must all be retained by the township. The township must keep all officers hired under the grant for a minimum of 12 months.

Currently, there are no township police officers working under the COPS program.

Rouan also will purchase a granite columbarium for Kerr Cemetery on Salt Springs Road to hold cremated remains. The cost is not to exceed $15,000, and the names and birth and death dates of the deceased will be engraved on two black granite doors. The rest of the structure will be gray.