La Salle talks about acquiring new street sweeper

The city of La Salle is exploring acquiring a new street sweeper next year, Finance Director John Duncan said during Tuesday’s budget hearing.

The city’s sweeper is 18 years old, Duncan said. Life expectancy for an average street sweeper is 10 years.

“We are exploring options to purchase, finance or lease, as well as evaluating a maintenance plan for each option,” he said.

Duncan said he plugged the $360,000 number into Tuesday’s budget because it’s the cost of purchasing the sweeper outright, and he wanted to have the funds appropriated for the city to have that option.

“As a reminder, even though I refer to it as a budget, it is actually an appropriations ordinance,” he said. “So, just because we have to be appropriate for these things does not mean we are giving ourselves permission to purchase or will be purchasing them.”

Duncan said the city has been communicating with the mechanic performing maintenance on the sweeper, and most of the issues with the sweeper are rust or related to its age.

“This sweeper is well past its life expectancy,” he said. “There’s things that are dry rotted … and all kinds of mechanical issues that are not new to the last year or two. These things have been falling off the sweeper for some time.”

Duncan said the city had rented one and saw what the most modern-style sweepers look like.

“And I think many of you elected officials got feedback when we did that: ‘Oh, that’s great. We want to see the people out there more,’” Duncan said.

The finance director said that with the one they have, they are unable to do that, but with the way the new one loads, unloads and drives, it cleans significantly better than something that was produced in 2006.

The city will have a final public hearing sometime in July.