Lisbon City Council tabled action on leasing a Turf Tank paint robot. The cost of the lease will be split between the City of Lisbon and Lisbon Schools.
The council tabled action to investigate if going with a higher cost lease option would be a better financial option for the city and schools moving forward, especially when it comes to maintenance of the machine and the amount of paint that is used.
Lisbon activities director Brandon Horman explained how beneficial the GPS guided paint sprayer would be for the schools, especially in man-hours for painting the lines.
“Our initial painting of our football seats usually takes two people at a bare minimum of 10 hours each,” Horman said. “This Turf Tank, once it is programmed, is able to complete that job in roughly 2.5 hours.”
The paint robot uses diluted paint, which means less paint is needed for the lines on the football and soccer fields.
Horman said that in the areas they saw the robot used utilizing GPS, the lines were consistently straight and visible, even with the diluted paint.
Parks and recreation director Drayton Kamberling said that he spends an average of $3,000 on paint each year, and that doesn’t count the man hours that go into painting those fields. With the new sports complex to the north of Lisbon, there will be additional fields that the city will be responsible for painting.
Horman said that for the football field, the school would go from using 10 to 15 gallons of paint to roughly one and a half gallons. This would put this in the range of being almost budget neutral for both the schools and city, while also freeing up employees to be able to work on other tasks.
City administrator Brandon Siggins said looking at this as an additional item in the shared agreement between the city and school was a great deal all around, and the costs would be split 50/50 between the two entities.
The lease for the machine includes a set amount of paint and to better compare the cost savings this would generate, the council wanted to evaluate how much paint it would take for the football, soccer and other fields that the city and school use.
Many members of the council could see how the machine reduced work costs, as it can easily complete painting jobs in a more efficient manner than staff painting those lines themselves.
The school and city were looking at a lease option in case there was a newer version that comes out in the interim years. The issue the council was quibbling over was which option would work better for both the City and School, the $11,000 per year lease or stepping up to the $16,000 per year lease.
Kamberling said that if the only reason for looking at the higher lease rate was to cover maintenance of the machine, Springville and Mount Vernon own their own similar machines that could be borrowed while Lisbon’s is repaired.
Mayor Doug O’Connor said most of the consensus of the council was to move forward with leasing, but they wanted to evaluate whether stepping up to the higher cost lease would be more beneficial than sticking with the $11,000 lease.
“We especially want to know what we might need to budget for maintenance if we choose to go with the $11,000 lease compared to the $16,000,” O’Connor said.
Lisbon Schools had a school board meeting Monday, June 17, where this item would be discussed as well.
Council member Rick Scott moved to table a decision on the machine to the Monday, June 24 council meeting in order to investigate the differences between the two leases.