ORANGE — A new fire engine, a fixed roof, an air compressor system and three new employees are coming to the Orange Fire Department.
Thursday night’s Special Town Meeting saw residents pass eight articles unanimously, the bulk of which were upgrades to the Fire Department.
The town approved a total of $203,093 in municipal spending for these upgrades, as a majority of the funds for these items — the three new staff, mobile air compressor unit and pumper truck — come from Federal Emergency Management Agency grants, which require relatively small matching municipal funds.
The $100,000 approved to “make repairs to the Fire Station Roof and structure, including design, materials and construction costs,” was the only upgrade that is not backed by a grant, and the town will be borrowing the money.
The other upgrades, however, are made possible by the awarding of “extremely competitive” FEMA grants, Fire Chief James Young said.
Three new, full-time firefighter/EMTs are to be hired, with salaries and benefits primarily covered by a $706,185 Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response grant program known as SAFER, from FEMA over a three-year period.
The period of time covered by the grant is divided into three 12-month periods. In the first and second periods, the town will pay 25 percent of the cost of the employees, and in the third year the town’s contribution to the investment is raised to 35 percent. Exact numbers for what the town’s burden will be in future fiscal years were not given at the Special Town Meeting, but residents nonetheless approved the first $25,000, which covers its burden for the 2019 fiscal year. The rest of the municipal matching funds must be voted year by year.
While there is no obligation by the town to keep the new employees after the three-year period and access to federal assistance is over, Young said he plans to keep the employees permanently.
“The SAFER grant was designed to provide assistance to municipalities who have demonstrated a need for additional staffing coupled with a financial need,” Young told voters.
“If we choose not to accept this award, the need for additional staffing is not going to go away. What will go away is the opportunity to fund a large majority of this staffing and incrementally increase our budget with federal assistance,” he added.
Young said the Fire Department has done a better job at bringing in revenue since he became chief three years ago, averaging $650,000 in revenue annually for the last two years compared with $450,000 on average annually when he started.
He said the Fire Department will continue to increase revenues in order to keep the three new employees at the end of the FEMA grant, naming propane installation, fire detector inspections and gas storage as sources of income, as well as being able to run an additional ambulance with the increased staffing.
A six month “grace period” is allowed under the grant’s guidelines, Young said, in order to allow the Fire Department to advertise the openings. Young expects to have all three positions filled on Feb. 1, 2019.
The demand for the Orange Fire Department’s services are already high, Young said, and the grant allows the department to up the amount of personnel working per shift from three to four.
Not only will the Fire Department be more effective with additional staffing, but having a modernized air compressor system will improve services as well, Young said.
The town approved the spending of $4,284 from its stabilization account to match a $90,000 Assistance to Firefighters grant from FEMA, specifically for a the purchase of a mobile breathing air compressor trailer.
The current unit, Young said, is in poor condition and is mounted on a 1981 military surplus truck, which will be decommissioned and returned to military surplus.
“The way our current unit functions is it’s a cascade system, which means it’s limited to the capacity of the bottles on the truck to fill our air bottles,” Young said. “Once you run that down below a pressure, to fill the bottles you have to return to the station to refill the truck and go back to the scene to refill air bottles.
“The new unit will have a diesel engine. It will have a compressor on board and, as long as you have diesel fuel, it can fill an infinite amount of bottles on the scene without having to return to the station to refill,” he added.
Two articles, both of which also passed unanimously, allow the spending of $23,809 from the town’s stabilization account and $50,000 from its capital stabilization account for the purchase of a new fire engine pumper truck. These funds will match a $500,000 grant from FEMA.
The department originally applied for a $600,000 grant, as many new fire trucks cost upwards of $700,000. The new truck will not include “every bell and whistle,” Young said, but will replace a very out-of-date vehicle held in the Tully area of town.
“It’s in very poor condition and needs to be replaced,” Young said of the 1987 truck.
“(With this grant), we’ll be able to transfer a truck from downtown that’s in much better condition to serve the needs of Tully, and the new engine would become the primary response engine for the downtown district,” Young said.
The new vehicle will have a stainless steel frame and is expected to last about 20 to 25 years, according to Young.
Young said that winning the grant, which is under the Assistance to Firefighters program’s vehicle acquisition category, was another “extremely competitive process.”
“On average, it’s about 100 to 150 vehicles awarded nationwide, and we were fortunate enough to win this award in round three, which means we have one of the top scores in the nation under this category,” Young said. “We’re very, very proud of that.”