CAPITAL PLANNING
Our administration maintains a list of our 23 taxpayer-owned pieces of heavy equipment and trucks, ranked by when we believe replacements should be made. We monitor the age and condition of our largest pieces to anticipate future capital expenditures. The Village’s outside risk management consultant has reported that our fleet is in better than expected shape because our DPW staff uses an “unusual degree of care” maintaining vehicles.
Five of our 14 diesel vehicles/equipment have been replaced since 2016. We have done this without raising taxes.
At Wednesday’s Village Board meeting, we approved the request from our DPW to enter into an agreement to order/purchase a 2024 Western Star plow/salt truck with a hook lift system body for $312,298. Its estimated build date is January 2024 and we will not begin paying until FY ’23-’24 or ’24-’25. This truck will replace our well worn 24 year old 1998 Chevy dump truck whose parts have become limited or unavailable.
We are especially excited to replace this ‘98 Chevy with an updated lower emissions truck. Our five recent replacements were all lower emissions equipment. We have tried to secure grant assistance via the EPA Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program but have yet to be successful, so all our upgrades have been funded with local taxpayer funding.
NAMING TRUCKS CONTEST
It’s clear we live amongst many creatives who enjoy wordplay so we felt it made sense to try to harness some of that spirit by hosting our own truck naming contest like the Minnesota DOT’s: https://www.dot.state.mn.us/nameasnowplow/
The Village of New Paltz has nine DPW staff who plow snow and they each use a different truck on their respective routes. We would like to name each of these plow trucks. See their pictures for inspiration.
Please feel free to make suggestions via email to: comments@villageofnewpaltz.org.
- Submissions are limited to no more than 30 characters (including letters and spaces).
- Any submissions that include hatefulness or inappropriate language will be deleted.
- Naming trucks is meant to be fun and lighthearted, so please be thoughtful and considerate when submitting.
- Submission deadline Friday 12/31/22, 11:59pm
Contest winners from Minnesota DOT (for inspiration): Betty Whiteout, Ctrl Salt Delete, The Big Leplowski, Plowasaurus Rex, Scoop Dogg, Blizzard of Oz, No More Mr. Ice Guy, Edward Blizzardhands, Plowy McPlowFace, “Ope, Just Gonna Plow Right Past Ya”, Duck Duck Orange Truck, Plow Bunyan, Snowbi Wan Kenobi, F. Salt Fitzgerald, Darth Blader, The Truck Formerly Known As Plow.
Capital Planning & Naming Trucks Contest