Council approves $170K for new paver
Commercial-grade vehicle can pave main roads, public works director says
Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in Thursday’s edition with outdated information. The updated version is presented here. The Call regrets the error.
WOONSOCKET — Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino has won high praise for his road reconstruction program, but he says he can do even better with a commercial-grade paver, and now the City Council is poised to find $170,000 somewhere in the budget so he can buy one.
After an enthusiastic sales pitch from D’Agostino during a meeting that took place about a week earlier, the council on Monday approved his request to purchase a used 2011 Caterpillar AP 1055E – a utility vehicle that’s designed for big, commercial-size jobs.
D’Agostino said the seller, Milton CAT of Milford, Ma., has agreed to forego payment on the vehicle until spring, after the city gets a chance to try it out.
Councilors voted on Monday with little discussion, but D’Agostino elaborated on the details during the earlier workshop.
He explained that the city has “a small paver” capable of covering 15 feet or roadway per pass that’s “perfect” for secondary roads. But the Caterpillar can do 19 feet, making it big enough to repave the city’s primary roads with just one seam in the middle, which is how they should be done. Roads with more than one middle seam deteriorate more quickly, he said.
“There isn’t a road in the city that’s wider than 38 feet,” he said.
A number of primary roads, like South Main Street and East School Street, will have to be paved in coming years – some of them as soon as this spring, said D’Agostino. Without its own paver, those jobs would have to be done by outside contractors at a premium. If the city has the necessary equipment, D’Agostino said, the work could be done by highway crews under his direction, and the Caterpillar would pay for itself after just four or five jobs.
“After five years of training the crew and working with them, I believe they’re ready for the next step,” D’Agostino told councilors at a Jan. 13 work session. “The taxpayers would reap the rewards in this case.”
During the last several years, the city has rebuilt about 45 secondary roads in a program officials have touted as a rare example of in-house efficiency among the state’s municipalities. By using its own staff – trained by D’Agostino, a former private-industry paving professional – the city has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on work that would otherwise have to be outsourced, officials say.
D’Agostino said he’d never buy a used paver unless it was a Caterpillar, because that company stands by its products. He said the vehicle will be fully reconditioned and has a life expectancy of roughly a decade. The same model would cost about half a million dollars if it were new, he said.
“This is the type of paver you would see doing all types of commercial work,” said the public works director.
As the vote Monday indicated, councilors are overwhelmingly supportive of the deal. But it was Councilman Roger G. Jalette Sr. who may have summed up the council’s reaction best during the recent workshop.
“I’ve seen the work you’ve done with the small paver,” he said. “I can only imagine the miracles you’d be able to work with this one. I’d be in favor of it.”
In recent weeks, the council has shot down requests for unplanned expenditures from City Hall – most recently a roughly $52,000 ask for new copying machines – expressing a desire to protect a $1.1 million contingency fund amid concerns about the future impact of the pandemic on the city’s fiscal 2022 budget.
Those concerns haven’t gone away, but Council President Daniel Gendron says he is committed to finding a way to finance the paver – though the details are apparently still being ironed out.
“We have a couple of budgeting gurus between Councilman Cournoyer and Councilman Ward – we’ll work together and try to identify it,” Gendron said. “I’m sure the administration will come up with something, too. Let’s put our heads together and make this happen.”