The City of Mount Vernon will be looking into purchasing a ladder truck for the Mount Vernon Fire Department.
The new truck will replace Engine 215, which was originally put into service in 1995. The base bid for the ladder truck would be $1.59 million.
This would be the first ladder truck for the Mount Vernon Fire Department, and ladder trucks are usually reserved for larger metropolitan departments.
City administrator Chris Nosbisch said since COVID prices for replacing items like fire engines have only increased.
“What used to be closer to $500,000 purchases are now $800,000 or more,” Nosbisch said. “While the price of a ladder truck can look expensive, it’s not ridiculously higher than the cost of replacing an old engine.”
While there was a deal in price if the city were to pay upfront for the engine, Nosbisch said he wouldn’t recommend going that route.
“If we were to pay to purchase the engine today, we would have to borrow $1.1 million today,” Nosbisch said. “The interest we’d pay on that over the next four years and tapping our debt capacity isn’t a smart fiscal move.”
Instead, Nosbisch recommended allowing four more years of funds to be generated by the levy the fire department had renewed to help lower the amount the city would have to borrow.
By signing a commitment to purchase the ladder truck now, Nosbisch reminded council they would be committing a council four years from now to that obligation for this purchase.
The price for the ladder truck was slated to increase in February, but a contract would lock in the $1.59 million price.
In a presentation provided to the council, members of the fire department outlined why a ladder truck was something they were looking to add to the department’s fleet.
The current compliment of ladders and reach does not match life safety concerns of buildings above two stories. That would include dorms and buildings at Cornell College, the new Cottonwood Grove apartment complex and Sleep Inn in the area that would benefit from a ladder truck in the fleet.
It would also allow the department to cut holes in roofs of buildings to allow superheated gases to exit a burning structure and improve conditions in the interior of buildings for firefighters and occupants.
The engine would also allow the department to be able to conduct more rope based rescues. One of the areas this would have been beneficial was the grain bin rescue in March 2022. There are also a number of rescues at Palisades-Kepler State Park that could benefit from further horizontal or vertical reach. The engine would be one of the first out vehicles for all operations that would require ropes or confined space rescues.
One of the ways that the department was looking at adding this truck was to provide additional resources to the fleet in mutual aid requests. Within a 3-mile radius, there are five fire engines to respond to most calls.
The department is looking to replace Engine 215 anyway, and replacing with a ladder truck now will keep the department’s engines on track for the next replacement of a fire engine in 2037.
The department will also retain an ISO rating of 4, with progress towards a 3. The department noted with Lisbon Fire Department purchasing a pumper tanker, the departments in mutual aid are equipped for suppression. Adding a ladder truck would help fill the gaps in life saving components.
Replacing with just a traditional fire engine would come at a $1 to $1.2 million cost, so the additional $300,000 to $500,000 price tag with the added benefits made sense for the department to consider.
Council member Paul Tuerler said he appreciated the thoroughness of the information provided by the department to rationalize the purchase.
“I appreciate that you outline the value this brings to all mutual aid partners,” Tuerler said. “It’s something we don’t think about every day.”
Tuerler said that looking at the 28E agreements and the way area agencies work together made this something that assists not only Mount Vernon, but other communities in the area.
Council member Mark Andreasen said the fire at Jordan Smith’s home Memorial Day weekend 2023 was another instance where having a ladder truck would have been beneficial to the community.
“That would have put firefighters trying to cut the roof in a safer position,” Andreasen said.
Tuerler moved for the contract to have a fire truck built and commit the city to paying for it when construction is finished in roughly four years time to allow funds to be bolstered to help pay for the piece of equipment.