Bourne DPW Wants New Vehicles as Part of Capital Request

Bourne Town Hall

BOURNE – The Bourne Department of Public Works has asked for a new front-end loader, a dump truck, and several other pieces of new equipment as part of the capital funding requests for the fiscal year’s pending budget. 

DPW Superintendent George Sala said that though the department already has a front-end loader, having access to the second John Deer loader that was requested for $200,000 would greatly assist their work. 

“It runs all the snow and ice, loads all the trucks for us. It does a lot of the work out in the field,” said Sala. 

Sala said that only having the one machine is a bottleneck for the department and that he has had to turn away jobs because of it. 

Sala also said that if the machine were to break down or be otherwise occupied, then the department would be forced to rent another for an estimated cost of $5,000 per month. 

Edwin Rivera, vehicle maintenance foreman for the DPW, said that the current machine is 15 years old and “it’s getting tired”. 

Rivera said that, ideally, the older machine would be kept in the DPW fleet as a yard machine just dealing with snow, ice, and loading trucks, while the new machine would be the one that goes out on the roads to take care of fallen trees, floats in the marina, or other jobs. 

“We’ve been fortunate over the last 15 years that nothing’s happened to it, but it would be nice to have one on-site just in case something does happen to this loader,” said Rivera. 

Other equipment in the DPW’s capital funding request included a new $79,000 Ford dump truck and plow, a new $25,000 air compressor unit, and a $22,000 aluminum body for one of the fleet’s trucks. 

The truck was a request from last year that was deferred and would replace another aging truck in the fleet. 

The new air compressor would likewise be a replacement for older equipment. 

The aluminum body would go towards modifying an existing vehicle to be more useful to the fleet; a plain flatbed truck that the DPW has had little use for. 

The aluminum body would grant the truck more carrying capacity so it could collect leaves, transport wood chips, and help with other needs of the DPW.