A heart monitor for ambulance patients, hydraulic extraction tools for car accidents, thermal imaging cameras for fires and rescue searches — with the Fire Department seeking a relatively routine 2.87% operating increase, budget talk with the selectmen quickly turned to capital requests.
“Relatively flat,“ First Selectman Rudy Marconi said of the Fire Department’s 2014-15 operating request, from this year’s $3,805,000 to $3,914,000 for next year. Most — about $2,488,000 — is for salaries for the department’s 43 employees.
The department’s big capital request, a $575,000 replacement fire truck for “Engine Two,” had been pushed off from next year to the year after next, the 2015-16 budget, but was returned to next year, at the fire department’s request
It was the first thing discussed when acting Fire Chief Kevin Tappe appeared at the Board of Selectmen’s Feb. 4 meeting.
“You might want to reconsider,” Chief Tappe said of the decision to put off the fire truck purchase.
With the $575,000 fire truck pulled from next year’s capital budget and delayed a year, it would bump into another high-cost purchase the following fiscal year.
“We’re due for an ambulance,” Chief Tappe said.
The selectmen’s five-year capital plan shows the 2015-16 ambulance purchase at a projected cost of $215,000.
Still, none of the selectmen seemed eager to move the fire truck back into 2014-15 and add more than a half-million to next year’s capital budget.
Instead, the selectmen questioned Chief Tappe about difficulties the department reported in December with the new “Engine One” that was delivered a year ago
“Still a few little bugs, nothing major,” Chief Tappe reported.
The principal problem, with the $575,000 truck’s steering, has been successfully addressed. But some electrical problems persist.
“We’re still getting these idiot lights that come on,” Chief Tappe said.
How do the firefighters who use it feel about the new truck? Mr. Marconi asked.
“The guys love the new Engine One, driving it, working on it,” Chief Tappe said.
“It turns on a dime. It was built specifically for the winding roads of Ridgefield.”
He said the company that built the new truck for the town, E-One, has extended the warranty and been cooperative on providing needed repairs. Mr. Marconi added that the previous fire truck the town had bought from the firm had demonstrated good performance and durability over many years.
The selectmen hoped that if the company is considered as a supplier for planned purchase of the next engine, the town be given a break in price.
“There should be some consideration of the difficulties we’ve had,” Selectwoman Maureen Kozlark said.
For next year, 2014-15, the Fire Department capital budget. The request includes $43,000 for more new hydraulic extraction tools that firefighters use to free accident victims from the twisted wrecks of crashed automobiles; $32,000 for a new cardiac monitor for one of the emergency medical service ambulances; and close to $45,000 labeled “firefighting equipment” that involves three different items, according to Chief Tappe.
This would be the second year of a replacement program for the hydraulic extraction tools. The department had found the older tools it had weren’t adequate to cut some of the reinforced frames of newer cars.
The $32,000 cardiac monitor is also a continuation of a multiyear replacement program begun two years ago to equip the department’s vehicles with up-to-date cardiac monitors that provide medical workers with more information.
“A Life-Pac 15, which will replace our last Life-Pac 12,” Chief Tappe said of the new monitor.
The five-year capital plan anticipates replacements every two years, with further cardiac monitor purchases in 2016-17 and 2018-19.
A big part of the $45,000 “firefighting equipment” line is replacements for three thermal imaging cameras used for locating people in burning buildings, or searching out hidden hot spots in walls.
“Infrared, so we can see heat signatures,” Chief Tappe said. “You’ll see the fire in bright white, you can see a body slightly dimmer white.”
But the cameras can also be of use in search rescue operations when there’s a missing person.
“We’ve used them searching the woods — daytime, nighttime, it doesn’t matter,” Chief Tappe said.
The department wants to replace all of its three thermal imaging cameras, at $10,000 each.
Chief Tappe also proposes starting a four-year program to replace the five-inch-wide supply hoses that run from a supply source, such as a hydrant or a pond, to a fire engine that in turn pumps it out through smaller hoses to the firefighters battling a blaze.
“This our supply hose,“ Chief Tappe said. “Each engine has 1,000 feet.”
The exception is the volunteers’ Engine Three, which is used as the main supply pumper in larger fires and has 2,000 feet of the hose.
The hose all dates to 1997, Chief Tappe said, and he hopes to start replacing 1,000 feet a year to avoid a situation where the aging hose is found to have rotted or gotten weak — and it all has to be replaced at once.
The hose costs $6 a foot, so it will appear in the five-year plan as a $6,000 request every year through 2017-18.
The selectmen expect to look at the fire and other town department budgets again in the first week of March.
“Thank you, guys,” Mr. Marconi said to the Fire Department’s delegation. “A big thank-you, not only to the paid but to the volunteers.”