The Marion City Council met Wednesday evening with a full plate of spending decisions, including a proposed garbage truck purchase approaching a quarter-million dollars and a pair of water system infrastructure contracts totaling more than $316,000.
The meeting, originally scheduled for Monday, was pushed to Wednesday, March 18, which was too late for coverage of the council’s actions in this edition. Coverage will appear in next week’s Times-Standard-Herald.
Here is what was before the council.
A proposal from Ingram Equipment Company of Pelham would put a new Heil PT1000 20-yard rear-loading garbage truck on a 2027 International MV607 chassis in the city’s sanitation fleet at a cost of $239,293.92 including freight. The truck would come equipped with a rear vision camera system, cart tippers, dual tailgate buzzers, and carries a five-year/150,000-mile engine and transmission warranty.
A financing proposal from De Lage Landen Public Finance lays out two paths for paying for it over five years at roughly 5.6 percent interest: monthly payments of $4,588.46 or quarterly payments of $13,613.43.
The agenda listed the item under “Budget Data Review & Questions,” leaving open whether the council would vote on the purchase or simply discuss it.
Two water system contracts were also up for review. Both fall under the city’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund Critical Needs Infrastructure Improvements Project and were bid February 17, with letters of recommendation from Utility Engineering Consultants of Homewood.
The first, Contract MA25-112, covers emergency telemetry upgrades at three water tank sites — including new pump controls, SCADA enclosures, pressure transducers, and backup power equipment — to allow remote monitoring of the system. Control Systems, Inc. of Pelham submitted the low bid of $26,388.
The second, Contract MA25-113, is a larger job: a complete overhaul of the chemical feed system at the water treatment plant. The work calls for removing the existing chlorine gas system and replacing it with bulk storage tanks and metering pumps for liquid bleach, caustic soda, coagulant, potassium permanganate, and phosphate. Schmidt Environmental Construction of Auburn bid the project at $290,200.
Both contracts require approval from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management before work can begin. The engineer certified that bidding complied with state law and recommended awarding both.
The infrastructure work comes on the heels of a high-service pump failure at the treatment plant that forced an emergency council meeting on March 5 to authorize repairs — one of several episodes that have underscored the age and fragility of the city’s water system.
