Three years after looking at a comprehensive plan to upgrade its water and sewer services and on the brink of making some major decisions about a sewer plant, Hogansville City Council voted Tuesday to switch dance partners on the project.

Hogansville has cut ties with Infratech, its engineering firm for the last seven years, and decided to contract instead with G. Ben Turnipseed and Associates.

“We need to make a change,” City Manager Bill Stankiewicz said.

The two firms - both based in Atlanta - charge nearly the same fees, but the Turnipseed group, which also represents West Point, has a much different plan for how Hogansville can get a new sewage plant.

“Infratech’s proposal said we could get a new, million-gallon-a-day, plant for between $8.5 million and $9 million,” Stankiewicz said. “Everyone else who has looked at it (including Turnipseed) has said between $4.5 million to $5 million. It’s just a lack of confidence.”

The new engineers already are looking at federal grants to fund the project. Hogansville has known for several years a new sewage plant would have to be built; its sewage sprayfield is at capacity. Instead of building a new water plant, Hogansville now gets its water supply from LaGrange and Coweta County, which allows officials now to concentrate on the sewage plant.

Council also voted Tuesday to allow the police department to recondition several of its current patrol cars, rather than buy new ones. The city will spend about $14,000 of money seized in drug busts to recondition one car before having a total of four done with Allan Vigil Ford in Fayetteville.

Chief Moses Ector and Assistant Chief John Pearson say they expect the reconditioning to go well enough to get the other cars done. The cars will be taken apart and have “everything but the frame” replaced.

Each car will have a warranty of three years or 100,000 miles.

“I’ve seen the (reconditioned) cars at the Georgia Tech Police Department and they look like new cars,” Pearson said.

The five cars set to be reconditioned all have more than 120,000 miles on them, and Stankiewicz said reconditioning, rather than repairing, can save Hogansville about $10,000 a car.

Jennifer Shrader may be reached at jshrader@ lagrangenews.com or at (706) 884-7311, Ext. 236.