The Regional District of Fraser-Fort George’s board of directors approved the purchase of two pickup trucks and opened bids for maintenance work at a landfill west of McBride at its Thursday, July 18 meeting.
A contract worth $115,896 before taxes was awarded to Prince George’s Wood Wheaton Supercentre for two four-wheel pickup trucks.
General manager of environmental services Laura Zapotichny explained that the last time the regional district was looking to buy vehicles like this, there was only a single bidder located outside of the area.
This time around, there were four bids including local suppliers. Other bids came from Northland Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram, Prince George Ford and Driving Force Fleet Solutions.
The Wood Wheaton bid was the lowest.
“We had put forward the option for lease return vehicles, hoping that would be a little bit more inexpensive for us,” she said. “But we’re getting new vehicles for the best price and this is significantly under budget for what we put forward for this price.”
While the country of origin is not considered in the regional district’s procurement policies, Zapotichny said one of them was mainly built in Canada and the other mainly built in Mexico.
A report written by district staff said that the trucks will be used to perform routine field and liability inspections, maintenance, snow plowing, sanding and supervision at regional transfer stations.
The purchase will allow the district to transfer a 2014 Dodge pickup truck to the Valemount Regional Transfer Station and replace a 2017 GMC truck that was transferred to the Mackenzie Regional Transfer Station from the Foothills landfill.
The contract was approved unanimously by the directors.
Two tender processes were opened for the Legrand Regional Landfill, one for logging services and the other for compaction and cover services. This landfill only accepts demolition, construction and land clearing waste from transfer stations in McBride and Valemount.
For the logging contract, a report from staff said that as materials at the landfill are compacted, soil is required to cover the waste to meet regulatory requirements.
The soil typically comes from onsite burrow pits, but the current area is running out of materials.
Earlier this year, the report said, the provincial Ministry of Forests granted a license to cut trees to facilitate a new burrow pit.
The board of directors’ next meeting is on Thursday, Aug. 21.
