The RM of Portage la Prairie's investing half a million dollars into some much needed heavy equipment this year. Reeve Kam Blight explains council just passed a resolution to purchase an additional grader.

Reeve Kam BlightBlight explains, "During our budget deliberations, council thought that, based on the craziness of the weather and its challenges we're faced with in keeping up our roads in great shape -- or in good shape, for that matter -- and the demands of the citizens in the RM of Portage la Prairie, we needed to expand our fleet of graders. So, we've added an additional grader. This now makes six."

He says Brandt was chosen as the winning bidder with a John Deere grader, so their fleet is consistently comprised of John Deere units. Blight says last year saw the RM in bad shape moving into the winter. He notes the new additions have to be brought to up to good-condition in a timely fashion, with a lot of catching-up to do with the RM's dirt roads. He adds the citizens of the RM should hopefully see the benefit of the addition in the near future.

The grader costs $422,000.

Blight says they also purchased a used bulldozer for $141,250. He says dozers cost over half a million dollars brand new, and this unit will help with snow removal and knocking back banks. Blight adds the dozer will work quite well with our kind of weather conditions, and will certainly get a lot of hours of use.