Lowndes County Board of Supervisors on Monday morning approved spending about $354,000 on a new tanker truck for the District 2 Volunteer Fire Department.
County Administrator Jay Fisher said the department would pay for part of the cost with about $200,000 in fire insurance rebate money and money that was already in the department’s budget.
It will borrow the $153,677 balance from the county and pay it back over five years, Fisher said. The payments come to about $30,735 per year.
There is quite a bit of lead time on that order, Fire Coordinator Neal Austin said, so payment won’t be due until at least next year.
“They’re telling us 590 days (to get the truck),” Austin said. “We’re going to secure the purchase order now to get the process started at the factory. After about 500 days they’ll notify us that it’s close to getting ready and then we’ll be ready to do the finance part.”
The truck will hold 2,000 gallons, Austin said.
“It also comes with a dump tank,” Austin said. “We can drop that on the ground and let the (firefighters) use that while the truck goes and gets more water.”
District 2 is now relying on a “loaner” from District 3, Austin said. That truck was scheduled to be surplused but was pressed into service as a stopgap until District 2 can get its new truck.
The old truck, which was around 20 years old, had become unusable, Board President and District 2 Supervisor Trip Hairston told The Dispatch after the meeting.
“It has a steel tank, not a plastic-lined one, and over time the tank rusted,” Hairston said. “They would have to replace the water in the tank every few days because if it was in there longer than that there would be a lot of rusty sludge in (the water).”
That sludge would ruin the equipment in the pumper truck if that water was used, Hairston said.
“We put the old truck out of commission a couple of months ago,” Hairston said.
The purchase was unanimously approved.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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