By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The Wood County District Public Library trustees voted Monday to purchase a bookmobile and a new delivery van.
The bookmobile will replace a 13-year-old vehicle that has long passed its expected operational date. That vehicle has been off the road for repairs earlier this year.
The board voted to purchase for $210,000 a new bookmobile from Tesco Specialty Vehicles in Oregon. The price is far below what the board was expecting to pay when they started discussing the purchase early this year. Then they were looking at a price north of $300,000. Also, Tesco can deliver the vehicle withing six to nine months. The Columbus dealer the library was also working with had a delivery time of one year or more.
Expected delivery date is March.
The difference, Penrod said, is that Tesco has chassis in stock and will not have to order one and be subject to the vagaries of the supply chain.
The board also gave Penrod the authority to spend up to $45,000 on a new delivery van. These are in such demand that the trustees want Penrod to be able to act quickly when one becomes available.
The decision to buy a new bookmobile came after staff looked at all options.
That included, said Library Director Michael Penrod, questioning whether a traditional bookmobile that drives up to a location, parks, and patrons, most often preschoolers troop aboard to select books.
He said that 40 percent of the stops are at daycare centers, 40 percent are deliveries to patrons who cannot come to the library, nursing homes, or to the jail, and 20 percent are community stops with the bookmobile parked in a central location for patrons to visit.
While the bookmobile was immobile, the library used its van to bring books to pre-schools and daycare centers. The books would be taken from the van into the location.
Not the same was what patrons decided, Penrod reported to the trustees Monday.
Some said they really wouldn’t need the service if that was all that was offered.
With some schools eliminating their libraries and that could increase demand for the bookmobile.
Ken Frisch, president of the board of trustees, was on the committee with library staff that studied the purchase.
“This is a real critical part of what we’re doing,” he said.
He maintained that a vehicle meant to serve several functions, does not accomplish any of them well.
So, the committee focused on getting the best bookmobile.
What they ended up with was a vehicle that’s the same as what they have now “without the bells and whistles,” Frisch said. Those special elements made it difficult to repair and restricted its operations.
The new vehicle will be the same size so it can fit into the dock in the library. It is also maneuverable enough to get into some of the smaller spaces it must use when doing a visit.
This vehicle will run on gas. The current bookmobile uses compressed natural gas, which at the time of its purchase was considered a fuel of the future. But that never happened. So, the bookmobile needs to come back to Bowling Green to refuel, which greatly constricts its range.
Given the size of the vehicle and the weight of the books it hauls, an electric vehicle is similarly restricted. Even if a charging station is available, how long it would take to charge is an issue.
The new bookmobile will be equipped with a lift for loading books and also for allowing patrons in wheelchairs to enter.
Frisch said the current vehicle is equipped to “kneel’ with the suspension system lowering the body to ease loading and make it easier for a patron with a disability to get in. It was that suspension system that broke most recently.
This vehicle will be able to be repaired locally or at Tesco. Given five other manufacturers installed systems on the current bookmobile, getting it repaired was a difficult process.
Given the demand for the bookmobile, the trustees determined it made sense to buy a designated delivery van rather than have the bookmobile drop off books to individual patrons or to nursing homes.
Depending on what’s available, the van may be a hybrid.
The existing van which is 12-years-old will be kept and used for as a maintenance vehicle.
