Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

City Buys New Garbage Truck

The city of Prescott will have a new garbage truck in 12 weeks or so.

The City Council voted 5-0 Monday night to accept a bid of $63,721 from Prescott Motor Co. for a Ford chasis and a Leach garbage compacting bed. This bid was the only one submitted for the complete setup. A bid from Curtis Long in Camden was submitted for the chasis only.

The new truck will be able to compact the garbage as it is collected.

Presently the collection of garbage is not compacted, but is just thrown in bags into the truck. Because of this, as many as six trips a day are made to the landfill. With the new truck, it won't have to go but once a day, or every other day, Mayor Howard Taylor said.

Taylor also said if the compactor at the landfill should be out of order, the new truck would be suitable for carring to the district landfill at Nashville.

Taylor said the current truck is just about worn out. He said it was down last week some, and the crews gathering the garbage from pickup trucks.

The new truck should last the city five or six years, Taylor said. By then, he related, the city will probably have to be separating the garbage anyway -- plastics, paper, glass, metal and household refuse.

In other business the City Council passed a resolution to "execute an agreement with the Prescott Housing Authority for the purchase of the electrical distribution system" at three of Prescotts apartment complexes.

Presently the Prescott Housing Authority owns its own electrical distribution system at West Terrace Acres on West Second, Chaney House on Scott, and High Meadows on Hayes.

The resolution also calls for the housing authority to give the city an easement for the system.

The residents of these apartments will begin paying electrical bills when the change is completed, but their rents will be reduced by the federal government to compensate them for the increase.

The city heard from Freddie Hamilton, who complained about a house next door to her mother. The house, located on Greenlawn, has been vacant for several years, she said, and is in need of many repairs, and the yard makes it worse.

Taylor said the city will take care of the yard and a search will begin on the rightful owners, who live out of town. Condemnation of the house will be sought, which could lead to the its destruction if it is not repaired.