City of Detroit is paying $65,000 to lease 2004 Dodge Intrepid

[pwaldo]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technolo...173443388.html

For drivers who don't want to commit to a new car purchase, leasing has become a popular option. But for a police department in a city with a struggling economy, running up a $65,000 bill for what amounts to renting an nine-year-old car seems like a bit of an oversight. That's just what the Detroit Police Department has been doing since 2003 when it leased a 2004 model Dodge Intrepid at the lofty price of $608 per month. The problem? They've been paying that price ever since.

The original terms of the lease stated that the car would be returned in 2005, at which point the department could choose to buy it outright to take delivery of a newer model. That trade-in never happened, and so far the city has handed out a total of over $56,000 in monthly payments. But that's not all: Because the department has gone well over the original mileage agreement, they owe nearly $10,000 in additional fees, bringing their total bill to well over $65,000. That's $65,000 for a car that could be bought new in 2003 for less than $25,000.

But that's just one vehicle, and the city is currently paying for over a hundred leased cars currently in use, and all of them are operating on expired leases. The seemingly careless spending could total several millions of dollars in the end, and the city apparently has no plans to reverse the practice.

The ridiculous waste of taxpayer money was discovered by local news station WXYZ, after they obtained the sales records through a Freedom of Information Act request.

[theonedru]

And this is just one car, how many dozens f not hundreds are they also leasing.. No wonder Detroit is broke,

[shrewsbury]

they must have a bad credit score

[hawk2618]

Sorry to say this but.....I think someone is braindead who heads the Detroit P.D.

[BGT Masters]

And this is just one car, how many dozens f not hundreds are they also leasing.. No wonder Detroit is broke,

It says in the article they have over a hundred of them under lease.

[Star_Cards]

yikes! the thing that's even worse is that this could possibly be standard practice for a lot of other government agencies. This is the type of stuff they need to correct before they start worrying about cutting programs that are actually needed.

[Rybowski]

Wow, the police department in Detroit is more broke than anyone else in Detroit. Maybe they can ask some of their high paid sports players to help out with the debt, haha!

[MattDMC]

Living near Detroit all I can say is once you think you've heard it all, get ready for Detroit to shock you again.

The city had been doomed for years and compared to some of the stories you hear this one isn't that bad, more comical than anything.

[duane1969]

Living near Detroit all I can say is once you think you've heard it all, get ready for Detroit to shock you again.

The city had been doomed for years and compared to some of the stories you hear this one isn't that bad, more comical than anything.

Yeah I was reading an article the other day that said in 2009 the average sale price of a house in Detroit was $7500. That blew me away.

[MattDMC]

Yeah I was reading an article the other day that said in 2009 the average sale price of a house in Detroit was $7500. That blew me away.

Well to be fair the average is a bit lopsided due to all the burnt out stripped out houses that go to auction for a couple hundred bucks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/house...dollar-2010-12
http://www.businessinsider.com/cheap...t-homes-2011-6