Road and Bridge Dept. getting new equipment

SANDPOINT — The Bonner County Road and Bridge Department received approval Tuesday to purchase multiple new vehicles to ensure the county’s roads stay well maintained year round.

Director Jason Topp came before the board with two requests — one for a new street sweeper and the other for multiple new dump trucks. The sweeper, a 2024 Superior Broom from Papé Machinery, will be utilized by the department nearly all year.

“This will be used for sweeping all the roads in Bonner County,” Topp said. “We use it pretty much all year long. We use it to sweep the sand and everything off the road in the spring and we use it for our chip seal season as well in the summer months.”

The sweeper will cost roughly $90,200 and those funds will come from the department's Capital Heavy budget. The funds for the dump trucks, Topp said, will have to come from monies being moved from other budget line items.

“We’re needing to move some of the line items around so that we can actually purchase those trucks and make the paper trail to be reportable so I can track it when I do my financial report at the end of the year,” he said.

The Road and Bridge Department has not purchased any dump trucks since 2017, Topp said, and some of the ones still on the roads are from the 1990s. Many of the vehicles are models which no longer have parts being made for them, which the director said has created challenges to keep the vehicles operable. In some cases, he added, the department has had to have parts custom made just to keep the rigs running, which is expensive.

“The ones we’re trying to replace out, some of those are from 1995; some of them are from the early 2000s,” he said. “We have run them pretty much through their life cycle; they’re just about what you would consider garbage.”

Topp said the department is currently paying roughly $200,000 each year just to maintain the vehicles, which are very close to their last leg.

To pay for the trucks, line items 0028430 — Crushed Rock and 0028440 — Sand will be adjusted. Line item 0029520 — Capital Heavy will be increased by $1,239,436.

In addition to both of Topps's  requests — which were unanimously approved by the board of commissioners — the Road and Bridge Department is also getting a new lift for its repair shop, which was approved in the consent agenda. The current lift is over 25 years old and parts are no longer being manufactured for it, which is why it’s time for an upgrade, Topp said.

The new lift will cost roughly $62,750.

“So not only in the consent agenda did we need a new lift to lift the trucks,” Commissioner Luke Omodt said, “but we’re also trying to get trucks for the county that don’t need to be lifted as frequently.”