County getting three new plow trucks this winter

Brown County is getting a brand-new plow truck, hopefully before the snow flies.

Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner found a 2017 Mack at a discounted price out-of-state, already fitted with a plow and salt spreader. It’s going to cost the county $143,000, delivered, with a five-year, 150,000-mile warranty.

The Brown County Commissioners voted unanimously to “declare an emergency” and cut a check immediately.

“We have a snow route with no truck. It is an emergency,” Magner said.

The money is coming out of the highway department’s already-allocated budget for this year.

The truck this one is replacing was a 1999 model. The floorboard was falling out of it and then its engine blew, he said. The only other way to plow roads without it was to use a road grader, and that would leave a layer of snow or ice behind with no salt or sand on it, he said.

The commissioners also OK’d a plan to buy two more trucks by redirecting money that had been planned for other uses in the highway department’s budget this year. Fully outfitted, those two Kenworths will cost $175,000 each, Magner said. They probably won’t be delivered until January.

Magner said he has extra salary money from not filling a position this year and some extra in the culvert and guardrail funds, which will be used toward this purchase. “We’re not touching the paving money at all,” he said about finding money for the trucks.

Getting three new trucks will help the department phase out older trucks which are “running on borrowed time,” he said. The older ones will be offered for sale, and that money can be saved for more new equipment, he said.

The purpose of building a new truck garage behind the highway department was to take care of the equipment better, so it would last longer, Magner said. His drivers have been taking that lesson to heart. “We don’t let things go,” he said.

Why aren’t lines painted on more county roads?

Brown County roads that were paved with the last round of road grant money are going to be striped “as soon as the weather straightens up,” Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner said.

Those were Crooked Creek, T.C. Steele and Salt Creek roads and Sweetwater Trail.

County resident Vivian Wolff asked at the Nov. 1 commissioners meeting why the county didn’t stripe more roads, especially the edges of them.

Magner said that’s been discussed. They’d looked into buying a striping machine, but it’s cheaper to pay a company to do the work than for the county to buy, maintain and operate its own machine, he said.

Legal counsel has said that Brown County roads don’t meet the minimum ADT, or average daily traffic, at which striping is required, Magner said. “Pretty much all of our roads are optional to be striped, but through all our hills and curves, it makes it more complicated,” he said.

County commissioner Dave Anderson said he’s had trouble seeing the edges of roads himself, and mentioned the aging population in Brown County.

Magner said if the county is going to start striping roads that aren’t currently striped, it needs to set aside money to repaint them every two to three years. “If we don’t maintain them, we have a liability issue,” he said.

There is some money in the highway budget next year to do some additional striping, he said, but not on all of the county’s roads.