County Maintainers Down to Three
In a rare split vote, the Glasscock County Commissioners’ Court on Aug. 30 decided to sell one maintainer outright and to trade one in on a new machine, lowering the number of maintainers to three. Commissioner Mark Halfmann opposed the purchase of a new machine, but was outvoted by the other three commissioners. Commissioner Michael Hoch contended that since the money was in the 2003-2004 budget, the court should go ahead with the purchase.
Commissioner Jimmy Strube, who had said at an earlier meeting that buying a Caterpillar maintainer was just as good as having that money in the bank because of the machine’s high resale value, agreed with Hoch.
Halfmann wanted to go from four to two maintainers rather than three, saying the county no longer needs three, and that the money budgeted this year for a maintainer would be better used toward emergency vehicles and equipment.
A used John Deere maintainer from Halfmann’s precinct was sold to Bee Equipment of Lubbock for a bid price of $42,500, and the new one purchased on a $48,000 bid from Warren CAT. The new CAT machine was bid at $179,995, less $128,500 as trade-in of a used CAT maintainer. (Commissioners decided to keep the mole board off the old machine, lowering the trade-in bid by $3,500 to a total of $48,000). The new machine will have a guaranteed buyback of $112,500 at five years or 5,000 hours.