The City of Williams Lake has a new street sweeper.

A poll of Council conducted last week supporting the purchase of the 2018 GlobalM3 street sweeper was approved at Tuesday’s regular council meeting.

“The street sweeper was purchased with the intent that over the long period of time that it’s going to end up saving the City $75,000 in purchase costs, and it’s not even going to be a new expenditure for 2019 because those funds to pay for the lease for 2019 are coming out of an operational account so it’s not even going to cost us any new money and it was already targetted to be in our 2020 financial plan,” said Councillor Jason Ryll who also chairs the Public Works Committee.

“So we start paying for it next year.”

The new street sweeper with 18 hours operating time and full warrant pro-rated to in-service date was purchased from Kendrick Crocker Equipment at the asking price of $276, 800.

“It was a limited time offer from the company. They were willing to give us an introductory rate because its a demo and it was a limited time offer and it was considerably less than the initial purchase price,” Ryll said.

Mayor Walt Cobb who did not support the poll of Council told MyCaribooNow that he had believed the estimated 2019 amount of $56,000 would be allocated from current year surplus.

“It would have cost us $35,000 or $45,000 to fix the old one and that didn’t make a lot of sense, so if they could use that operational money to lease the new one until the end of the year until we got into the 2020 budget then I didn’t have a problem with it,” Cobb said.

“But I was still opposed to the fact that we were taking it out of surplus.”

The City’s one and only previous street sweeper has not been operational since May 10 due to replacement parts needed. It will be traded in at $35,000 for the purchase of the new one.

Director of Municipal Services Gary Muraca confirmed that they hope to have the new street sweeper operational by Thursday or Friday after having gained possession of it on Monday.

“We’re thrilled to be able to take this opportunity that was presented to ourselves.”