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Linn County purchasing director outlines collaborative design for mobile command trailers, vehicle reuses and recent procurement wins
Summary
Purchasing Director Brett Hutchins described a multi-department process to design multiple mobile command trailers for EMA, efforts to reuse existing county assets, and a list of recent bids and procurements. Supervisors praised cross-department collaboration; no votes were taken.
Brett Hutchins, purchasing director, told the Linn County Board of Supervisors on Feb. 18 that the county’s approach to emergency mobile command capacity evolved from buying a single trailer to designing multiple smaller trailers after cross-department discussion on specs, towing, storage and maintenance.
Hutchins said the effort pulled input from emergency management (EMA), sustainability, risk and other departments to define use cases, towing and maintenance needs. "What would be in the trailer? How would we pull the trailers? ... What would be the target audiences?" he said, describing the multiagency conversations that shaped the current plan to consider multiple trailers rather than one large mobile command center.
Supervisors and EMA partners praised the approach and noted the trailers could be used regionally by adjoining counties through EMA mutual-aid arrangements. Hutchins also described internal reuse efforts that matched surplus assets to departmental needs — for example moving a commercial refrigerator from Public Health to the Correctional Center — and a vehicle-exchange practice that stocks certain departments with needed plow-equipped trucks without new purchases.
Hutchins summarized recent procurement activity: the mailroom processed about 31,700 pieces last month; bids and purchases included tire-repair agreements for secondary roads, sand/snow/ice control contracts, culverts and rotary cutters, LP tanks for park facilities, air monitoring systems for the sheriff's office, fencing for conservation projects, and six Panasonic Toughbooks for LIFTS. He also noted efforts to secure picnic tables, tree shear attachments, and John Deere equipment for conservation.
Supervisors thanked Hutchins for the cross-department coordination and noted how prior fleet assessment work enabled recent vehicle replacements for juvenile detention and other needs. No board votes or formal approvals were recorded during the report.
