Douglas County’s Drug Enforcement Unit is buying five used cars, and drug dealers are helping pick up the $66,000 tab.

Three of the cars will be purchased with $36,000 from the county’s drug-forfeiture fund, which is money seized during drug raids and generated from sales of vehicles and other items that were used in drug deals.

An additional two vehicles will be bought with $30,000 from the city of Lawrence.

County commissioners agreed Monday to approve the vehicle purchases. The vote was 2-1; Commissioner Jere McElhaney opposed the arrangement because he argued that the county could get a better deal.

The county has paid Laird Noller $23,700 a year to lease five vehicles for the drug unit, but the cost is going up to $29,700 at the end of this month.

Each car replacing the leased vehicles will cost nearly $14,000 when annual maintenance and other costs are factored in. That’s cheaper in the long term than leasing, but McElhaney wondered why it couldn’t be cheaper still.

A college student can get a solid, four-wheel-drive vehicle for $6,500, he said. Why does the county need to spend more than twice as much?

“That’s too much — way too much. That’s dumb,” he said. “The numbers are not right. We’re being fooled. … These numbers are just not realistic, but they must be, because Bob and Charles agree.”

Bob Johnson is the commission chairman. Charles Jones is the commission’s sole Democrat. Johnson and Jones agreed the switch from leased to owned vehicles to be a worthwhile, long-term investment.

After two years, Jones said, the county will be saving money — savings that will compound the longer each vehicle lasts.

Sgt. Tarik Khatib, supervisor for the unit, said the switch also would make operational sense. No longer will detectives be relegated to driving Ford Tauruses or other similar sedans when they go to clandestine meetings with informants, court dates in Kansas City, Kan., or stakeouts on the street.

“Criminals are savvy,” Khatib told commissioners. “They know what a police car looks like.”

Instead, detectives might be able to pick up used sport utility vehicles, pickups or other cars that might better blend in with society without drawing attention, he said.

“These aren’t what we drive to the drug deal,” said Khatib, who noted that the unit could use seized vehicles for undercover work. “(For those) we’ll still have the $4,000 Chevy Caprices with the rims missing. We have some of those in the works right now.”

Still, McElhaney said, forking out $14,000 for a basic car that’s 2 or 3 years old, with 20,000 to 30,000 miles on it, just doesn’t add up.

“Private life is a whole lot different than government life, I guess,” McElhaney said.

This will be the first time the drug unit has used the forfeiture fund — whose balance will go down from about $80,000 — to finance vehicle purchases. The money for that normally has come from the city and county operating budgets.

The vehicles are expected to hit the streets by the end of the year.