At a special meeting of the Prescott City Council Monday evening, the council heard from a panel that had been charged with solving the city’s troubles with keeping its garbage trucks in service. Right now, two are down and, as Chris Hopper, Sanitation and Street Department Superintendent, and member of the panel reported, his staff is down to only one truck and is having to use other kinds of vehicles to pick up much of the city’s trash.
Hopper was joined on the panel by Bruce Bean, City Business Manager, and Ronnie Sprouse, Lead Salesman of Arkansas Municipal Equipment, a seller of recycling and refuse that has operated from Poyen since 2014. The three sat at a table facing the city council in the Prescott Senior Adult Center dining room.
Mayor Terry Oliver told the council he had brought the panel, which he called his trash truck committee and said it had advised him on these matters in the past. He asked Hopper to explain the situation with Prescott’s trash trucks, the discussion of which was the only agenda item for the meeting that was called for this past Wednesday.
Hopper explained that his department as of the past two months has had one 2015 International brand sanitation truck out of commission with a bad engine. The 2005 truck it had been using as a backup stopped running last week.
“Right now we’re at square one,” Hopper said. “We're working with trucks, trailers, and dump trucks--anything to get the job done. And so we're here today to see what we can do about explaining to you exactly what's going on with our trash truck. If we get it fixed, where would we be? We’d be in the same spot down the road.”
Sprouse told the council he had been working with Prescott for seven years, providing the city with trucks on a lease plan. “Chris and I discussed possibly adding another lease truck to the fleet. You had a 2015 International [sanitation truck] and I don’t know how many of you guys know about the International MaxxForce engines, but they destroyed International. They actually went bankrupt over it,” he said.
Sprouse said the city had been lucky to get even five years of use out of their International truck, let alone the ten that the city actually ended up with. He said the engine could be rebuilt but called it a “roll of the dice” whether Prescott could get even two years of use after investing up to $40,000 in fixing it. Meanwhile, a fixed 2015 International would still only fetch about $20,000 if sold after an engine rebuild.
“I would hate for you to spend that money in something that you're not going to get your money out of,” Sprouse said. “And the body is also ten years old. Trash is very corrosive. It slowly eats away the metal in the trucks. So you that problem is going to start to arise also, if it hasn't already.”
Sprouse said International stopped using the MaxxForce engine about seven years ago and that now its engines were more reliable. He told the council, “I can get you a lease truck. I spoke with everybody, and I said, it, if you approve it tonight and get the ball rolling, once I know that the paperwork has been sent and Cadence Bank, that's who does the lease program, that I would go ahead and let you pick the truck up.”
Sprouse said that in his view the lease of the new truck could be paid for with funds the city would have spent for maintenance. Because of the terms of the lease, maintenance costs would be covered for the next two years.
Members of the city council asked about the status of the 2024 sanitation truck which the city is leasing. Hopper said it is a Peterbilt and is functioning well. Council member Ivory Curry commented that he had learned the city had spent $90,000 on maintenance of the 2015 International truck over the past ten years and asked Sprouse if any funds could be recovered from the two non-working trucks. Sprouse said he would only buy them for scrap. Only their engine cylinders would be of any worth.
Council member Patricia Roberts asked how long the lease agreement would be for. Sprouse said two years, but the city would have the option to make a balloon payment to buy the truck outright. Otherwise, the city could lease a new truck after that two years had elapsed. He would need to know one year from now what the city intends to do, because it takes one year to manufacture another sanitation truck.
City Accountant Carl Dalrymple, in answer to Council Member Howard Austin’s question of whether or not the city could afford the truck said the money to lease the new truck would come from what the city receives in its landfill fund, not from the general budget.
Council member Satarra Williams said, “I move we lease the 2024.” Several other council members seconded. A roll call vote was taken by the council’s recorder John Miller. The motion passed unanimously.
Sprouse told the council he would rather make a sale because the city wanted the truck rather than needed it in the way Prescott did.
The meeting adjourned at about 7:00 p.m., having been convened at 6:30 p.m.