POTSDAM – When the Town of Potsdam Recreation Program’s Zamboni ice cleaning machine broke down recently, Ogdensburg’s rec program came through with a loaner.

“It just wouldn’t hold a charge,” said Potsdam Rec’s Tim Carey.

Potsdam’s Zamboni has 40 battery cells. Carey says they found one that was certainly bad, and they changed that one. But not long after, they found another cell going bad.

“We had two options: repair seven or so cells, with no guarantee that it would fix the problem, or get them all done and get a three-year warranty. In the long run, it would cost more to do all of them,” just shy of $9,000, Carey said, but then it would be done and they wouldn’t have to worry about it for a while.

Carey called around to see what they could do in the meantime. As it turned out, Ogdensburg Recreation had not long ago got a new Zamboni for their rink and had kept their old one as a backup.

They went to the ’Burg with a Town of Potsdam flatbed and picked up Ogdensburg’s Zamboni and put it to use in Potsdam, “no charge,” Carey said, grateful to Ogdensburg’s program for the loan.

“Their Zamboni hadn’t been used for a while, so we had to could do a couple of repairs on it,” but that was little trouble, he said.

It normally would take about a week to repair the battery and get it back from Syracuse, but with the holidays and weather complications, it was closer to three weeks, Carey said.