{"id":26685,"date":"2025-05-24T11:29:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T15:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=26685"},"modified":"2025-05-24T11:29:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T15:29:16","slug":"fire-truck-down-payment-authorized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/24\/fire-truck-down-payment-authorized\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire truck down payment authorized"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decatur City Council has approved an $800,000 additional appropriation to its 2025 budget, the funds to be used on the purchase of a new aerial ladder truck for the fire department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A public hearing was held at council’s latest meeting, with no opposition to the appropriation aired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The $800,000 is a down payment on what will cost in total the sum of $2.5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council decided at its previous meeting that the purchase has to be made since the department’s current aerial is 28 years old and beginning to show considerable wear and tear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fire Capt. Chad Baumann (left) & Fire Chief Jeff Sheets<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The new truck, whose ladder can take a firefighter as high as 100 feet at a certain angle, is being purchased from the MacQueen Co., a dealer for Pierce fire trucks, which has supplied city trucks in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MacQueen truck, at a cost of roughly $2.5 million, can be readied and turned over to the city in a year or so. It is a stock truck, \u201cstock\u201d referring to the fact that it has a few miles on it due to the fact that it has been used for demonstrations and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council decided to go that way after Fire Chief Jeff Sheets said the stock truck would have all the specifications the city department needs, and a few modifications can be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going the conventional route would see an expenditure of around $4 million for an all-new aerial truck which could not be delivered in less than four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council earlier decided to figure out how to finance the rest of the purchase within the next few months, as the truck is being made ready for Decatur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com Decatur City Council has approved an $800,000 additional appropriation to its 2025 budget, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-26685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26687,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26685\/revisions\/26687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}