The Warwick City Council voted 7-0 to spend $7,400 at Monday night’s city council meeting to purchase “various work boots” for city employees in the personnel department.

The vote was part of the council’s “consent calendar”, which is a group of items and purchases bundled into one vote. If a council member has an issue with any of the purchases, he or she will ask for the item to be voted on separately. That allows a council member to vote against an item without voting against the remaining items on the consent calendar.

The boots will be provided to employees in the personnel department, which includes members of the Department of Public Works, the Warwick Sewer Authority, the Water Department, Automotive Department, and Sanitation Department.

During a telephone conversation on Tuesday, City Personnel Director Oscar Shelton said that the work boots have long been in the municipal contracts, and that over the years the practice has expanded into more city contracts. Shelton said that each employee, as stated in the municipal contract, is provided with one $70 pair of boots. Shelton said that money would be spent over the next three years.

That means more than 105 pairs of boots for city employees will be purchased over the next three years if the $7,400 is spent.

“The employees work on asphalt, and in some cases do paving, so the boots get beat up pretty quickly,” said Shelton.

“We spend no more than $70 per employee.”

The city council also voted to purchase a 2009 or 2010 Ford Expedition for the Fire Department. The purchase came up at a city council meeting a few months ago under the council’s emergency purchase rules. At that time, the city council voted 5-4 in favor of purchasing the truck, but the measure failed, because under the council rules, an emergency purchase requires a six-vote majority to pass.

Fire Department Assistant Chief Ed Armstrong said the department then went out to bid for the vehicle’s purchase, which is required under normal city purchasing rules.

The problem, however, is that going out to bid cost city taxpayers $1,600.

The truck was quoted to the city at $37,868 – about $3,600 dollars more than the city would have paid had it bought the vehicle earlier this year under the emergency purchases procedure. Armstrong said that the department was attempting to piggyback on the Massachusetts bid for vehicle purchases. The department couldn’t get the Massachusetts state bid price by formally going out to bid.

Armstrong said he added an additional $2,000 to the cost of the truck, by upgrading the lighting specifications in the vehicle, “for safety reasons.”

City council members, including Steve Merolla (ward-9), who was the lone member at the meeting to vote against the purchase, questioned whether or not the department needed the vehicle. Armstrong said the vehicle would be used by Fire Department administration, and that it needed a vehicle as large as the Expedition “for the weight we carry in the vehicle.”