Cass Politics

Posted By J.T. on July 1, 2010

From the Pleasant Hill Times:
F. Kirk Powell

The Pleasant Hill Fire District will have a new pumper on the road later this summer.
Fire Chief Steve Long and Assistant Fire Chief Nathan Carpenter picked up the new pumper from the manufacturer in Breda, Iowa, earlier this month and plan to make it operational the first week of August when firefighters have had the opportunity to equip the new truck and train with it.
A new pumper is part of equipment being requested by the Pleasant Hill Fire District in a $4.5 million bond issue on the ballot in August, but the need for a new fire truck was so urgent that the fire board agreed to purchase it early under a lease-purchase agreement.
“We desperately needed a new pumper,” Fire Chief Steve Long says. ”Both of our old pumpers are in such poor mechanical condition that we couldn’t wait.”
In fact, the two older pumpers have both broken down and had to be towed from a call three times in the past two months and the fire district has had to pay nearly $4,000 so far this summer in repair bills.
“We wanted to wait to buy the new pumper until after the bond election,” Long said, “but we didn’t have a choice.”
Long said the fire district will be able to make payments on the lease-purchase agreement if the bond issue falls short in August, but it would be tight.
“We couldn’t take the chance that one of our other pumpers would break down on the way to a fire and result in the loss of life or serious injury,” the fire chief said.

The new pumper will replace the fire department’s 1995 Ford fire truck and a 1994 International fire truck will be kept in reserve.
Both of the older pumpers were designed to last approximately 10 years.
The new pumper is a 2009 Toyne built on an HME chassis.
The truck is capable of pumping 1,500 gallons of water a minute and carries a deck gun that can pump 1,000 gallons of water a minute.
The pumper can carry 1,000 gallons of its own water and has a 30-gallon foam tank.
The truck can carry as many as six firefighters and has an onboard hydraulic generator.
The $319,724 pumper was selected from four bidders.
The bond issue being sought in August will allow the fire district to pay the new pumper off with those funds without a lease-purchase agreement. It would also finance the purchase of a new ambulance and a brush truck in 2011 and another new pumper in 2014.
The bond issue would allow the fire-rescue department to replace other outdated equipment and add an ATV to answer emergency calls on the Katy Trail and an inflatable boat for water rescue emergencies.
The bonds would also finance the acquisition of land and construction of a new fire and EMS station to meet current and future needs plus a satellite station in Strasburg to better cover the eastern end of the fire district.
Fire District board chairman Darrel Guyer says funds generated by the 75-cent levy approved by voters when the fire district was created in 2007 are used to cover regular operations expenses— salaries, benefits, fuel, utilities and equipment maintenance— and are not sufficient to cover the cost of equipment and facility upgrades.
The fire and ambulance departments responded to approximately 1,000 emergency calls in 2009.
Ambulance calls have increased by 3 percent since 2007 when the fire district was created and fire calls are up by 80 percent.
Guyer said the fire-rescue staff is limited by the size of the fire district’s present fire station that only has the capacity to house three fulltime workers and is unable to accommodate the staff of five emergency personnel that are needed to serve the community.

Category: Pleasant Hill
Tags: fire department, Pleasant Hill