Smackover’s city council met on Monday, June 14, and spent much of the meeting discussing the possibility of purchasing a new fire truck for the city’s fire department.
The meeting began with approval of the previous meeting’s minutes, the monthly financial statement and payment of the monthly bills.
The first issue discussed was the new fire truck, and Mayor Bobby Neal first offered some context about the potential purchase.
“We talked about, in April or March, taking bids for a new fire truck. We ran it for two months but never got a bid on it so the fire chief … contacted a company and is here to give us some information on it,” Neal said.
Smackover Fire Department Chief Rob Neal came forward to inform council members about the details of a fire truck he sourced from a Louisiana-based fire equipment manufacturer, providing the council with the truck’s specifications and a photograph of a similar truck from the Lincoln Parish Fire Department in Ruston, Lousiaiana.
The total cost of the truck, a 2021 Ferrara heavy duty side mount modular 3,000 gallon tanker, would be about $436,773, he said. The contractor is Fire-Master Fire Equipment, Inc.
Chief Neal told council members he would be willing to remove some additional add-ons from the truck to cut down the price.
“That truck has Bluetooth headsets and some other things we don’t really need, so there’s a few things we can shave off and get [the price] down a little lower… We could probably save about $10,000 on it,” Chief Neal said.
He also said that the truck would require a 210 days to build, per the contractor, and that the current price would stay until the end of the quarter, which comes at the end of this month.
Mayor Neal recommended the council use existing fire department funds along with an eventual low interest loan to pay for the truck.
“I recommend taking the fire truck fund and [Act] 833 money we have and, when we get the total price and the truck gets here, go to the bank and borrow the money… and pay it off like we did with the truck in 2011,” Neal said.
Act 833 refers to a state fire department funding policy that provides grants for projects including purchasing fire fighting equipment.
Council members voted unanimously to move forward with signing the contract for the truck.
Smackover Police Department reports were present in documents available at the council meeting.
In May, the SPD responded to 80 calls; filed seven misdemeanor and three felony incident reports and three accident reports; made one misdemeanor and two felony arrests; completed 1,110 security checks; made 59 traffic stops; issued 18 traffic tickets and 40 warnings; and provided 10 assists.
The next Smackover City Council meeting will be on Monday, July 12.