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Trucks were a topic of discussion at this month's Lycoming Water and Sewer Authority meeting.
A request to apply for a PA Small Water and Sewer Program grant through the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED)in order to purchase a Vactor truck to replace the one currently used was approved by the authority. The actual amount of the grant request will not be known until a final CoStar quote is received, but grant awards can be up to $.5 million.
According to information online, a Vactor truck, also known as a vacuum truck is used for cleaning and maintaining underground sewer lines,
Christine Weigle, executive director, said that the grant application has to be submitted by the end of the month, although a final decision by DCED probably won't come until later this year.
"The Vactor was on our radar for 2026, so the timing will be good for us if we get the grant," she said.
"If we're not successful with the grant, we can again seek other grand funding sources," she added.
Weigle noted that the reason the authority was seeking to replace the truck was because they're seeing a lot more money being spent on repairs for the current truck.
"Some of the larger entities rotate them in and out pretty quickly because they really do start to drain you for dollars and cents on repairs," she said.
A request to replace another truck in the authority's fleet was repaired, although there was a discussion, in light of the tariffs enacted this week, if it might not be wiser to purchase two trucks considering that another one is on track to be replaced not long after the first.
The trucks in question are Ford Ranger 4×4, super crew trucks.
"Again, we have a fleet that has a lot of vehicles in the same window of time," Weigle said
"One of the trucks is from 2011 with 157,000 miles and another one from 2012 with over 208,000 miles. These have been identified to be eventually eliminated from our fleet," Weigle said.
"As you know, it takes a very long time to get vehicles. The F-150 that was approved in December is now in-hand in Sunbury and getting the strobe lights mounted on them," she said, explaining that it should be delivered in a week or two.
The Ranger, a smaller vehicle, had been identified for operations and preventative maintenance.
"For tonight's meeting, I was intending to have one purchase of one truck. We do have in our capital budget a purchase of a second one," she said.
"The only thing I wanted to make sure of with the board, if you saw an email I sent out earlier, is if the board was concerned about potential price increases after May 1, they won't able to hold these prices and with tariffs and economic climates, the question is, really, do you want to purchase both trucks now? We had intended to have you authorized one tonight, and then we were planning later on in the year to have you approve the second one. But I just wanted to open it up for discussion if you wanted to make a purchase for one, or if you felt it was maybe advantageous to try to purchase the second," Weigle told the board.
After discussing the pros and cons, the board voted to replace just one of the smaller trucks.
The cost of the truck is estimated to be $36,000.
The next meeting of the board will be at 6 p.m., May 7 at the Authority's Board Room, 380 Old Cement Road, Montoursville.