NEWBURY — Two municipal vehicles have broken down beyond repair in the past two days, leaving the town with a critical shortage as winter approaches.
One of the vehicles, a 1996 Ford dump truck, lost its rear axle Tuesday as it was being driven on Rolfe's Lane approaching the intersection with High Road.
"We're lucky nobody was killed," Public Works director Tim Leonard said.
The other vehicle, a police cruiser, experienced transmission failure on Sunday.
Selectmen have scheduled an emergency meeting tomorrow morning at 9 to determine what to do. The meeting is in Town Hall, which is normally closed on Fridays.
Selectmen Chairman Joseph Story said many of the town's vehicles are old, and some are unsafe.
"When it gets to the point of safety, of liability, it's not good, not good at all," Story said.
The dump truck is fitted with a plow in winter. Leonard said the vehicle is usually used to clear snow and ice from the streets on a Byfield route during and after storms.
The truck is 14 years old, and trucks typically last six to eight years in a heavy-use public works environment, he said.
Leonard drove the truck to Town Hall last year to show officials that it was in bad shape. When the time came to drive it back to the highway barn at Old Pine Island Road, it wouldn't start.
Leonard said Highway Department personnel worked on the truck for months to make it roadworthy before taking it out for a test drive yesterday.
A new truck has been ordered, but it won't be delivered until March or April, he said.
The town has only two pieces of snow-removal apparatus, Leonard said. One of those is a $29,000 pickup truck and plow donated in September by The Governor's Academy.
Two seems to be the magic number in Newbury. The breakdown of the cruiser leaves the Police Department with only two dependable vehicles for patrols, according to Lt. John Lucey.
The cruiser that broke down is a 2006 model vehicle with 108,000 miles, Lucey said. When he inspected it after it was towed to the highway barn, Lucey said he found two other significant problems on the cruiser.
The town's dependable vehicles are a 2009 cruiser and a 2008 with 60,000 miles. As the use of those two cars increases, so will wear and tear, Lucey said.
"The cars are tired," he said.
Town Administrator Chuck Kostro said that in recent years the town has tapped its reserve account and sources such as state Chapter 90 highway aid to buy new vehicles.
"We're trying to use all the nontax revenue that we can, but the need is greater than our ability to find sources of funding," he said.
He said he has asked department heads to assess the condition of all their vehicles to determine the scope of the problem.
"We're trying to make do with what we have, but it's really getting difficult," Kostro said.
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