Published: August 19, 2008 11:49 am            

Clarksville Town Council OKs $1M fire truck

Ladder truck will be the first new fire apparatus purchased by the town in more than 30 years

A year from now, the Clarksville Fire Department will have a chance to christen a new ladder truck for the first time in more than three decades.

With a price tag of $880,440 for the truck and another $153,770 for related equipment, the new 100-foot, 2,000 gallon ladder truck will allow the department to finally give its lone truck some much needed time on the sidelines.

“It’s just past its prime,” Fire Chief Bob Hansford said of the company’s 37-year-old truck. “It’s expensive to maintain.”

The Town Council gave the fire department the go-ahead on Monday to contract with Towers Fire Apparatus Company of Freeburg, Ill., to manufacture the new truck.

Hansford said the new truck will be “top of the line” with some “old-school” features that include manual controls in the place of electronic systems that are difficult and pricey to fix and replace.

Mike Bowman, outdoor apparatus coordinator for Towers, told the council Monday night that the truck would be completed within 365 days of the contract being finalized.

Towers was chosen out of five proposals submitted. The Illinois company’s proposal was recommended by a committee that worked for more than a year developing specifications for the new truck.

“We spent a lot of time on this and I think we got all of the bugs worked out,” said Councilman Don Tetley, a member of the committee.

The stainless steel truck will have a 500 horsepower Cummins engine with a one-year bumper-to-bumper warranty. Various other components of the truck will have different multi-year warranties. The purchase will be funded by a $500,000 expenditure from the fire department’s capital improvement fund and a five-year leasing plan to be funded by the same plan.

Once the truck arrives, the department’s 37-year-old mainstay will be used as a back-up, officials said.

In other council business:

• Approved a contract for $5,650 with Louisville-based Integrity HR to review the town’s employee handbook.

• Approved a contract for $24,750 for a Keystone Software System to be used for budgeting and payroll. The system is the same being used by the Wastewater Department and will replace an existing system that is being phased out.

• Approved a contract not to exceed $24,000 with Memphis-based Team Contracting for the clean-up of a state-owned ditch line at the west end of Lewis and Clark Parkway. The clean-up is being ordered to clear debris that has caused nearby areas to flood.

        

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