Spanish Fort studies fire truck purchase

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SPANISH FORT – A proposal to make the Spanish Fort Volunteer Fire Department a city agency could affect plans to buy a needed new fire truck to replace a 20-year-old vehicle.

Fire Chief Roger Few told City Council members on March 2 that the department needs to replace a 1999 model truck. The truck, however, would not be ready for about a year, however. By the time the vehicle and the bill, arrives, the merger could be completed, leaving the city with the debt of more than $500,000 for the truck.

Mayor Mike McMillan and council members agreed that the department should order the truck and that the question of how to deal with the bill would be determined before the vehicle arrives.

City Attorney David Connor said Spanish Fort has several options.

“The city could buy the truck and lease it to them, just like you do the buildings,” Connor said. “Or you could have them buy it and it’s not against the city’s debt limit using the money that you all give them each year. There’s any number of ways that it could be structured depending on what’s best.”

McMillan said he supported the department’s plan to buy a new truck, but wanted to allow the council to discuss the issue before moving forward.

“I’m not opposed to it, but I felt like we needed to talk about it as a council, because long-term it would fall under us,” McMillan said. “There’s sort of a deadline pinch and I couldn’t dare without the council discussing how we want to approach this.”

Council members agreed with the proposal.

“In my option, we ought to just let them do it,” Councilman Bill Menas said.

Few said the department has two bids that meet department specifications. A truck manufactured by E-ONE company of Ocala, Fla. would cost $523,274 after changes in the original specifications and an early payment discount were applied.

A truck from the Pierce Manufacturing Co. of Appleton, Wisc., would cost $518,597 with the same discounts.

Few said each truck has advantages. The E-ONE truck has a roll cage in the cab for added safety. Other Spanish Fort trucks are also E-ONE models, so firefighters are familiar with the layout of the vehicles.

The Pierce truck is more powerful, 400 horsepower compared to 350 for the E-ONE and could be delivered sooner, 315 days compared to 370.

Few said the price of both trucks is close enough that either could be bought under state bid laws that allow a variance of up to 10 percent.

The chief said the department tries replace major trucks when the vehicles become about 20 years old.

“We have been working for about a year on replacing a truck. We have about a 20-year replacement cycle on big fire trucks,” Few told council members. “The truck we’re replacing is a 1999 and we have been going through the bid process or the spec-development process I should say, to design the truck. Typically, what we do is take the last truck that we purchased and whatever worked well with it, we kind of tweak that and whatever didn’t work well, we try to modify and make that work.”

He said the 1999 truck would remain in the department fleet as a reserve vehicle for about 10 more years.

Few said the department’s next major purchase would be in about five years when a 2014 model truck is due for replacement.

Spanish Fort, fire department, truck