By John Estridge
Franklin County Commission President Tom Linkel announced the county recently purchased a new dump truck/snow plow to replace a similar truck destroyed by fire at the county garage located in Oldenburg.
He made the announcement at the Franklin County Commissioners’ meeting Tuesday morning, February 23. According to Linkel, the county bought the truck for $134,860. He is speaking to county council later Tuesday about paying for the truck until the insurance money comes in. Linkel’s plan is to take the money for the truck out of bond money and then repay that amount when the insurance money arrives. Part of the bond money is to be spent on county highway equipment anyway, Franklin County Auditor Karla Bauman said.
If there is a difference, then the commissioners will reduce the amount of bond money that has already been put aside for other highway department equipment.
A fairly new dump truck, 54,000 miles, was destroyed by fire at the Oldenburg garage in the early morning hours of Friday, February 5.
Quick work by the Eagle Volunteer Fire Department of Oldenburg saved the other four trucks in the garage and the garage itself. A truck next to the destroyed truck suffered scorching, and the fire melted an outside mirror.
According to Linkel, it is not known what caused the fire. The commissioners called in the State Fire Marshal as a precaution, but he said the fire’s origin was not suspicious in nature. Linkel said the county’s drivers had been out the prior Thursday night late clearing roads. They came back and plugged their trucks into the block heaters. They do not know if the cause of the fire involved the block heaters.
At the Tuesday, February 9 commissioners’ meeting, Linkel and fellow commissioner Gerald Wendel voted to give commissioner Tom Wilson authority to buy a dump truck if it became available. Wilson was not at the February 9 meeting, because he was out plowing snow in his district, District 3, because the district was short on truck drivers.
In a related matter, the commissioners approved giving the highway department employees an extra 40 hours of compensatory time due to the large amount of time the department’s employees have spent clearing snow and ice from county roads.
Currently, the county highway employees are allowed 120 hours of comp time. Some of the employees are close to maxing that number out, Linkel said. Linkel, whose duties include being over the county highway department, said he would like to have the employees use the comp time before November.
