The Knoxville City Council approved the purchase of a new ambulance during a special session this week. Knoxville City Manager Heather Ussery spoke with KNIA/KRLS News about the decision.

“It was a big decision and ultimately with the couple of occurrences we recently had we realized it was time and was something that was much needed. We discussed at our last council meeting about purchasing the fourth ambulance and if it was time to purchase the demo model versus the one we had originally ordered and we had one ambulance that was down. We decided to repair that ambulance and continue with the one we had on order, but less than 24 hours later we had another ambulance go down so we thought it was a good time to bring that back for discussion.”

Ussery talks about a change in how the vehicles will be evaluated.

“Over the last several years we have monitored how many calls the vehicles go out on each year and those numbers continue to go up so you see more wear and tear on the vehicles. With our current cycle, we have them at 10 years and we realized that with these older models that are causing maintenance issues that would not be sustainable. We will be changing so that the vehicles will have a shorter life cycle, and also will be changing with two of the ambulances for 911 calls and the other two would be for transports and that is based on the model of the ambulance and what is best for those that are using it.”

For more with City Manager Heather Ussery tune into Friday’s Let’s Talk Knoxville