Highway equipment not making the grade

NORWAY — The town of Norway is running out of patience with an unreliable piece of highway equipment, said Town Manager David Holt at a selectmen's meeting March 17.

The equipment in question is a grader responsible for removing potholes and keeping the town's unpaved roads level and safe to drive on.

Since purchased new, Holt and Springer estimate that the town has spent $88,000 on repairs to the vehicle. Holt said the problems have not been restricted to one single part that could be replaced, but have affected various different parts of the grader at different times.

Going forward, said Holt, there is no way to know whether the issues have been taken care of or if more will continue to arise, requiring further maintenance and giving town officials more headaches in the process. When purchased new in 1997, the town had initially intended to use the grader until 2018.

"Does [the money spent] mean that it's as good as new?" wondered Holt, "Or does it mean that we're just going to be putting money into a vehicle that's a lemon?"

Springer and Holt will be including the purchase on a preliminary budget to be reviewed by selectmen and the budget committee, before being presented at town meeting.

This is not the first time that the issue has been discussed by selectmen. At a meeting on February 17, selectmen cited problems with the grader last summer when it was out of commission for months, and aid they needed to enlist from the town of Paris as a result, during a discussion on sharing services.

At that meeting, Bill Damon expressed the sentiment that making sure unpaved roads, often on the outskirts of town, are taken care of was an important task of the selectmen.

"People who live on those roads outside downtown are part of the town too," said Damon.

Holt estimates the price of a new grader at $225,000, of which he and Springer will be suggesting $120,000 come from the Highway Department's heavy equipment account the other $105,000 be borrowed or raised through trading in the old one.