By ADAM STEWART

Staff writer

Hillsboro City Council will make a decision whether to spend $30,000 for a truck to clean city sewers at its May 5 meeting.

City employee Mike Duerksen discovered a used 1992 Vac-Con truck for sale from Sellers Equipment of Salina.

Hillsboro spends about $15,000 per year to have a contractor clean one-third of the city’s sewers every year, Duerksen said.

The City of Ottawa previously owned the truck, and they liked it enough they bought the same brand, Duerksen said.

A comparable new truck would cost about $250,000, said Mark Johnson of Sellers Equipment.

Mayor Delores Dalke asked if the sewer department would have enough time to clean the sewers. It takes Mayer Cleaning Company about two weeks to clean.

Department employees will have more time available because they won’t have to haul sludge from the new wastewater treatment plant, Duerksen said.

Dalke asked Johnson if the company could hold the truck until the city’s next meeting, which would give council members time to evaluate how the city would purchase the truck.

Johnson said the company wouldn’t sell it to anyone else until after the city’s May 5 meeting.

In other business:

• Dalke, Councilman Robert Watson, and new Councilman Kevin Suderman took oaths of office. Elections were April 7.
• Council changed the zone of the future site of a hospital in Hillsboro Business Park off U.S.-56. The land was zoned for heavy industrial use, but Hillsboro Planning Commission recommended changing the zone to highway commercial at its March 26 meeting.
• Suderman resigned from Hillsboro Planning Commission, because he was elected to city council.
• City Administrator Larry Paine said he wanted to submit about $35,000 in overdue utility bills to collection agencies before writing them off as uncollectible.
• Route 56 Cruisers Car Club donated $671 to the city for repairs to the west shelter at Memorial Park.

Hillsboro City Council’s next meeting will be 4 p.m. May 5.