By Matt Riiska

As I am sitting in my office the snow is falling. With Thanksgiving two days away I guess we definitely missed fall. We have had less snow on many of our most recent Christmases than what we have now.

Good news. We have reached an agreement with the Town of Salisbury for the purchase of one of their plow trucks. For all of you gearheads, it is a 2013 International with a Cummins diesel, stainless steel dump body, On-Spot chains, it is well maintained with 38,000 miles and it is $42,000. There will be a town meeting on Monday, December 3 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall to approve moving the funds from our capital reserve account for the purchase. This will certainly help maintaining the roads this winter.

I recently attended a seminar on winter road maintenance. Green Snow Pro: Sustainable Operations dealt with best practices for the amounts and types of road salt to apply, equipment calibration, and when treatments should be applied. I will try to get the link for this onto the town’s website. One of the takeaways was that because of our travel habits and varying winter weather, we will need to apply some type of ice melting media. The whole focus will be to use the salt in the amounts needed and no more. We need to do this for obvious monetary reasons, but more for environmental reasons. Salisbury, for instance, uses very little salt. I will be working with the Public Works Department in making sure our equipment is calibrated and that we apply the amounts of salt and sand that we need.

Your part of this equation is to slow down, plan your approaches to stops and turns and make sure your cars are ready for winter driving. The one thing I learned when racing sports cars was “slow is fast”. Make believe there is an egg under your gas and brake pedals. They are not meant to be mashed on. In winter especially, easy on the gas and easy, easy on the brakes and don’t upset the car.

Stay safe, drive carefully and we will all have a great holiday.