YOUNGSTOWN — The city has installed GPS tracking devices in its snow-plow trucks to allow people to monitor where the vehicles are in real time as well as find out when their street was last plowed.

The city spent about $12,000 for the equipment and monitoring, said Kevin Flinn, buildings and grounds commissioner.

An icon on the city’s website — youngstown

ohio.gov — will allow people to watch where each truck is located, he said.

Also, the online program allows people to type in a street and find out when it was last plowed, Flinn said.

“We’ve talked about it for a while, and it is finally coming to fruition,” he said.

The city is waiting for three additional snowplow trucks to be delivered, which is expected in January, Flinn said.

The trucks were supposed to arrive later this year, but because of national supply-chain problems, delivery will take until January, he said.

The city paid $489,789 to FYDA Freightliner Youngstown Inc. for the three trucks.

The money came from the $82,775,370 Youngstown was awarded from the federal American Rescue Plan. Half of the money came in May with the rest coming next May.

When the three new trucks arrive, the city will have purchased a total of eight since 2019 after going 12 years without buying any, Flinn said.

The city’s snowplow-truck fleet currently consists of five from 2000, five from 2001, two from 2006, two from 2007, three from 2019 and two from 2020.

Once the three new trucks are on the road, the city will probably scrap the three worst from 2000.

dskolnick@vindy.com