Tremont Select Board Decides Not to Purchase New Fire Department Pickup Truck
Consideration of and possible approval of town warrant tonight
TREMONT—At its meeting on Monday, March 17, the Tremont Select Board voted not to approve spending approximately $62,000 on a new town-owned pickup truck for the Tremont Volunteer Fire Department. This decision came as the select board was wrapping up budget items in preparation for approving the FY2025/26 municipal budget.
The Tremont Fire Department has a 2014 Ford pickup truck with 14,000 miles on it that it would like to replace with a new one. While the current truck is low mileage and in pretty good shape, it does not meet the latest requirements for a piece of fire apparatus and upgrading it to meet these requirements would be costly.
The current truck is owned by the fire department and not the town because it was purchased with funds from private fundraising efforts. That occurred because the town declined the funds for the fire department to purchase a new truck when it originally proposed the purchase in 2013.
At the February 10 select board meeting, Fire Chief Keith Higgins proposed that the town purchase the truck from the fire department knowing that the town’s harbormaster did not have a dedicated truck to use for the related harbor work and often uses his personal truck.
The fire department had been offered $21,000 for the truck as a trade-in. The select board made the decision not to purchase the truck from the fire department and instead utilize one owned by the highway department that is rarely used. The select board unanimously passed a motion that this truck would now be for the primary use of the harbormaster with the allowance that the highway department could use it with notice and availability depending on the harbormaster’s needs.
The select board asked Chief Higgins to get some bids from dealerships for a new truck under a municipal leasing for purchase program.
At the March 17 meeting, during discussion regarding the purchase of a new truck, the select board was concerned that the town’s budget was facing a number of substantial increases already and the board members said that they were trying hard to keep the taxpayer’s burden increase as low as possible.
Town Manager Jesse Dunbar explained to the select board that a quote from Ford Leasing for a $62,000 truck at an interest rate of 8.98% for five years was $15,437 per year.
Dunbar had also sought out a financing quote from a local lender who made the quote for $65,000, just to be safe, and at a much lower interest rate of 5.08% for five years, it was $14,522 per year.
Vice Chair McKenzie Jewett asked about ownership at the end of a lease and Higgins replied that with a municipal lease the town would own the truck with no additional payment after the final lease payment.
Jewett asked, “What’s wrong with the other pickup truck that we have?”
Chief Higgins said, “We have been planning for three years to update it, and it has been taking this long to get through the process. Our intention is to change the use of the truck. The new pickup truck will also be a first responder’s vehicle to medical calls and the compartment that we have to put on the back has to be able to be locked to contain oxygen bottles and equipment and stuff like that. It will also have cameras, which, when the current truck was manufactured, it didn’t have backup cameras, which is a new requirement for NFPA for any vehicle that’s produced. So, we would have a bit of cost of updating it (the current truck) with aftermarket cameras and stuff. Three years ago, when we first started looking at replacing the truck, it was $54,000, so in the three years that we have waited, they have increased that much.”
“The current truck also can’t haul the whatever you are going to put in the back, right?” asked member Eric Eaton.
“You or I would think it would,” Higgins replied, “but it clearly says right on the glovebox ‘not designed for camper truck shells.’”
Eaton asked, “Were they gonna take it (the 2014 truck) on a trade, will that knock this number down?”
Higgins explained that the town auditors seemed to have an issue with intermingling money between town funds and non-town fire department money. The 2014 truck, the boats, and the UTV were bought with money donated to the fire department and it was suggested that the best course of action would be to sell the old truck outright and for the fire department to keep those proceeds separate from town funds. The money used from the sale of the old truck would be used for outfitting the new truck according to Higgins.
“How do we justify a truck when we just sent the school board back to the drawing board? I think that we have to be very careful and we really kind of made them go back and sharpen their pencil. I don’t think that this is necessary right now. They have a truck that they can use. It’s not ideal, I understand that,” Jewett said. She then added that with the revaluation, the select board is also having to figure out how to build a public safety building and trying to figure out the ambulance service situation right now. She said she didn’t think it was fair to say yes to the truck when they had to send the school back to rework their budget.
Chair Jaimie Thurlow said, “It’s just hard, it’s our job to try to keep your taxes down; it’s what we have to do and we are.”
After going over some additional expenses and budgetary outlooks for upcoming budgets, the select board voted not to approve the new truck purchase.
According to Dunbar, the select board “felt while it was an important purchase this year was not the year to do it, and they needed to hold off on that due to keeping the budget as low as possible.”
TOWN BUDGET
After tying up many of the budgetary and town meeting warrant article loose ends at its meeting on Monday, March 17, the Tremont Select Board is set to review and possibly approve the warrant for town meeting at its meeting tonight, Monday, March 24.
After starting the yearly budget process at an over 11% increase, the municipal budget is now down to a currently expected increase of 3.7%.
There are a number of factors that increase the overall town budget that are out of the select board’s and town manager’s control . These include the town assessments from the Tremont Consolidated School budget, the MDI High School budget, and the Hancock County Budget.
The town’s school budget assessment is expected to rise 10.11% which is lower than the original 11.41% increase that was originally presented to the select board on February 10. At this meeting, the select board asked the school to go back and try to decrease its budget without affecting services, employment, or programs.
During its March 17 meeting, the select board voted unanimously to accept the new school budget which drops the town’s assessment down to a 10.11% increase.
The high school budget is expected to rise 5.1% and the county budget is expected to rise 9.5% according to Dunbar.
Factoring in all of these, the overall increase to taxpayers from the town’s budget is anticipated to be 6.1%. This equates to an annual property tax increase of $224, or approximately $18.67 more each month, for a $400,000 home.
OTHER TOWN MEETING WARRANT ITEMS APPROVED
The select board unanimously approved the following proposed ordinance amendments to be placed on the warrant for town meeting. Most of these amendments are housecleaning amendments that make the land use ordinance more clear and less duplicative.
Solar definitions ordinance.
Appendix A ordinance.
Floodplain management ordinance.
Subdivision ordinance.
Site plan review ordinance.
The select board also unanimously approved the following proposed municipal budget line items as part of the proposed budget to be placed on the warrant for town meeting.
Wharf budget.
Harbor budget.
Seal Cove budget.
Tonight, Monday, March 24, the select board will review all of the articles on the warrant for town meeting and vote on whether or not to approve the entirety of the warrant for the town’s annual meeting on Tuesday, May 13, at 6:30 p.m., at the town office.
Cover photo courtesy of Tremont Volunteer Fire Department Facebook page.
Correction: at 2:04 p.m. we corrected this article to show that the truck had 14,000 miles on it. Many thanks to Chief Higgins for letting us know.
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