Riley County Commissioners Ron Wells, left, Robert Boyd and Ben Wilson.
Riley County EMS will soon receive two new ambulances to add to its fleet.
County commissioners approved the purchases Thursday morning and the vehicles will cost $242,336 each. The ambulances were bought from Horton Ambulance Company and is a business the county has purchased vehicles from in the past.
Riley County EMS Director Larry Couchman said there were cheaper alternatives, but was told by his staff to stay with Horton and their Freightliner chassis due to their reliability.
“Our county shops are extremely supportive,” he said. “In fact, we were actually looking at a different chassis that was a little less expensive than Freightliner and we had some push-back from the shop. They said it’s nice to go a little cheaper, but why, because our mechanical record supports this chassis, we haven’t had issues and we feel comfortable with it.
“So we thought we’d stick with the package that’s been successful for us.”
In other items, commissioners approved funds to repair one of the wind turbines at the Public Works park.  Ethos Distributed Solution Corp., based in Colorado, is under contract to perform the maintenance and their crews confirmed the Northwind turbine had been struck by lightening.
Assistant Riley County Engineer Gary Rosewicz told commissioners Ethos’ estimate to repair the damage is $15,000 to $25,000 and would include replacing at a minimum the yaw encoder, rotor encoder, two main circuit boards, and the weather vane.
The turbine, which was purchased by utilizing a Department of Energy grant, is one of two turbines at the park that was still functioning.
According to a study performed by Curtis Mader, Public Works Engineering Intern, the Northwind turbine produces an average of 187,100 kWh/year with an equivalent value of $15,100.
Commissioners expect the repairs to be paid for after two years of energy savings.
