By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- The Village of Potsdam plans to be ready if snow drops on the village this weekend.

Village Administrator Greg Thompson said at the village board meeting Monday night that one truck – a dump truck with a plow and sander – is ready now and at least one more truck will be ready “for a possible snow event this weekend.”

The National Weather Service is calling for a chance of snow and rain showers Sunday and Sunday night.

Department of Public Works Superintendent Jim Corbett said Tuesday that several more trucks, some with the same plow and sander setup, “in the space of two hours can be fully operational.”

The village has four dump trucks, a grader with a plow, two pickup trucks with plows and a payloader with a 12-foot plow can be put into service. There are also machines for plowing narrow sidewalks.

Thompson and Corbett are expecting delivery of a new payloader within about a week. It will be on a four-year lease. The old village payloader will be traded in and that transfer will cover the first year’s lease payments on the new machine. At the end of the lease, the new payloader will belong to the village. Corbett said the average life of a payloader is 15 to 20 years.

Thompson had praise for Corbett and his DPW crew for making a “degraded” pickup truck useable again.

“I commend Jim Corbett and his crew” for ordering the parts needed to fix a disintegrating truck cab and rebuilding it, saving the village a lot of money for not having to buy a whole new truck.