OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Randy Woodbury, left, who heads up Dunkirk’s Department of Public Works, gives the city’s Finance Committee some updates at a recent meeting in City Hall.

Dunkirk’s Department of Public Works is getting a new fleet of pickup trucks, Director Randy Woodbury reported as he offered updates about his department at a meeting of the Common Council’s Finance Committee this month.

The city will be acquiring seven trucks with American Rescue Plan Act funding, Woodbury said. He said the city was getting “great deals” for the trucks.

“We’re going to have safe, good-looking pickup trucks that are commercial-grade and strong enough to get the job done,” he said.

Meanwhile, he expects to get something back for the old trucks — even the ones that are unusable. “The scrap value of stuff that doesn’t even run is worth something now,” he said.

“The plan is to get rid of everything,” he said. “If there’s something good we need, we’ll hold onto it.”

Woodbury also updated officials on the city’s efforts to end a consent order from New York state over its water system. As part of that, DPW has placed some 7,000 feet of new water lines on West Sixth Street, West Seventh Street and Roosevelt Avenue.

The lines are the last thing needed to satisfy the order, Woodbury said, and he expects to “cut the cord” of the state’s monitoring during the spring or summer.

“We can celebrate with a very large glass of Dunkirk water,” he said.

Also, Woodbury said DPW paved 250,000 square yards of road in 2021, using 11,000 tons of blacktop. Among the streets repaved were Courtney Street, Fairview Avenue, Greco Lane, Lakefront Boulevard, Leopard Street, Marsden Street and the city’s section of Willow Road.