The city will own each vehicle when the lease agreements expire.
WESTFIELD – The City Council has approved spending just over $300,000 from the city’s stabilization account to finance the lease or purchase of two new sanitation trucks and a new Fire Department platform vehicle.
Approved Thursday night was $193,000 for the new platform vehicle and $111,059 for the Department of Public Works allowing it to lease/purchase one new automated rubbish and one recycling truck. The city will receive bids on the new Fire Department vehicle Oct. 24.
Fire Commission chairman Albert J. Masciadrelli said the new platform vehicle will replace current apparatus that is 24 years old.
Fire Chief Mary R. Regan estimated the cost of the new platform vehicle at between $1.2 and $1.4 million. "This vehicle, when received, will replace the existing platform that has been in service 25 years. The existing vehicle will be used as a trade in," she said.
DPW director James M. Mulvenna said funding allows his department to replace two vehicle and upgrade the fleet of rubbish and recycling collection vehicles. A similar appropriation was made in January that allowed DPW to acquire two vehicles that have recently been received and placed in service, Mulvenna said.
The lease/purchase agreements soften the burden of expenditures for replacement of high-cost vehicles, Masciadrelli and Mulvenna said.
The platform vehicle agreement will be extended over seven years while the lease agreement on the sanitation vehicles will extend five years. The city will then own the vehicles when the leases expire.
Regan said receipt of the platform vehicle could take one year but efforts will be made to secure the new vehicle by next June or July.
Mulvenna said the city rubbish and recycling vehicles cost about $265,000 each and will replace trucks that have been in service since 2002 and 2003.
The appropriations leave a balance of just over $6.6 in the stabilization account.