The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
By Bill Connell.
I hate winter.
That has nothing to do with my muse. I just wanted to say it.
While I was sheltering in place from the cold I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube about fire trucks. Apparently over the last 20-25 years there has been immense consolidation in manufacturing of fire trucks. Unfortunately, this has not led to economy of scale. Prices have gone up and lead times are longer.
I try to attend or watch the Municipal budget hearings. They don’t just discuss numbers, you get to learn the goals and intentions of the town, and issues that affect how the town runs, and why. One issue is police cars, the price has gone up to buy and outfit them, and the lead times for cars is long. Everyone is dealing with this I guess.
I recently attended a combined meeting of all our fire houses. The goal of the meeting was to make sure everyone is doing what they can to improve response times, including recruiting.
Everyone knows volunteer recruiting is getting harder and harder. This is forcing the town to put things in place to make sure there is coverage. Slowly but surely the Municipality is getting involved in firehouses and how they run. I want to use the word insular when describing individual firehouses but that’s negative. That’s not my point. They run differently based on their clients. Some service mostly houses and some serve mostly industrial buildings. One size fits all does not work. Good luck with that. Team work makes the dream work, and maybe equipment purchases may be a way to start welding cultures.
Fire trucks are purchased by the individual fire house. I would guess it’s their single largest purchase. They can accrue the funds through the fire tax , but maybe the Municipality as a whole should leverage the whole town’s buying power to negotiate a better price in the same way they do police cars?
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