The Town or anyone else does not require special sanders to put down straight road salt during the winter months. There is no computerized controllers required. There are systems available and they are needed if you wish to record material used, the time it operated, speed of vehicle in use, pounds of salt put down per mile, etc. Say a Town wishes to establish a program and attempt to control how much salt is used and to try and accurately record this information for tracking and planning purposes, then yes, a need exists to buy these systems. However, if you just wish to switch from using sand/salt to just salt, nothing else or new is required. This is easily checked by anyone. It all depends on how one wishes to approach it. Often the attitude of the operator is the most important issue. Caring and being conscientious with Taxpayer equipment and material. For instance, driving around town and sanding while there is four or more inches of snow on the roads is not being a good steward of taxpayer dollars.


A call to some cities or Towns who have already made the change could provide the data to compare costs and then look at say three year data which could provide further information useful to consider a change.  For instance, how has the change affected street sweeping and drain cleaning.