Glenville’s highway department superintendent and a town board member are debating how FEMA money the town received following the ice storm of December 2008 should be spent.
Following the storm, which damaged thousands of homes and brought down power lines and tree limbs, FEMA awarded $500,000 to the town.
The superintendent of highways, Richard LeClare, said he wants to use about $250,000 of that to buy a new truck for plowing snow in the hills of Glenville because he doesn’t believe that the ones the town has now will make it through another winter.
Town council member Chris Koetzle said he agrees the town needs new equipment, but there might be better ways of funding those purchases and also better ways to spend the FEMA money.
I think first of all, the Town Board in particular has not done all of its work in assessing all that we can use this money for, said Koetzle. `What is the priority list? Nobody can point to the list and say, ‘Here are the things we need to invest in over the next couple of years,’` said Koetzle.
Koetzle said that before the FEMA funds came in, LeClare had never said the town was in dire need of new trucks, and the request came as a surprise to some board members.
`Two minutes before a board meeting, [Glenville Town Councilman] Ed Rosenberg introduced a resolution. We were told that we needed these three trucks; that they were critical,` said Koetzle.
He said that since the resolution was added only moments before the meeting, the resolution wasn’t voted on, but now, two months later, there is another resolution on the table to purchase the three trucks.
`I think we need new trucks. We just bought him a new truck in 2008,` said Koetzle.
He said that at the time of the new truck purchase, Koetzle told LeClare that he wanted a purchasing schedule so that they could get on a purchasing plan to buy new trucks every three years.
`We were all on that schedule when the money showed up from FEMA, and we threw that schedule out,` said Koetzle. `All of a sudden it’s an emergency.`
He said he asked LeClare during a work session if there was a backup plan in case his existing trucks broke, and he was told there were other trucks to do the plowing in an emergency.
`Let’s go through this budget process first for 2010. We’ll have that discussion in October,` said Koetzle. `If we do need a new truck, it might make sense to bond it.`
LeClare said he feels that the FEMA money was earned by the work of his highway department crew during the storm cleanup.
`Everyone thinks that the highway department is misusing funded money to buy equipment. We are in dire need of equipment,` said LeClare. `If FEMA didn’t come along, I would still be asking for this truck.`
He said that his fleet of trucks is quickly becoming unusable.
`We had a nine-year time frame where we didn’t order a truck. Now we need to get back on track so we can safely take care of our roads,` said LeClare.
Many of this plowing trucks in the fleet are about 20 years old.
Tom Kappola, who works as a welder-mechanic for the highway department and will be running against LeClare in this year’s election for the position of highway superintendent, said that the life expectancy of a truck like that is about eight to 10 years, but he added that these trucks are well-maintained and are in good shape, especially for their age.
Check future editions of the Scotia-Glenville Spotlight or the Web site at https://www.spotlightnews.com for updates to this story.
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