"We certainly didn't expect that it would have to be taken off the road immediately, literally overnight," Town Manager Peter Elwell told the Select Board at a meeting Tuesday. "It's our reserve pumper."

With a cracked frame and lots of rust, the 1998 Freightliner 3D failed inspection.

The pumper, which was expected to be replaced in fiscal 2020, would cost about $525,000 to replace. The vehicle is "rapidly deteriorating," according to Elwell.

Chief Mike Bucossi and Assistant Chief Len Howard discussed options with Elwell, coming up with a recommendation to purchase a combined pumper/rescue vehicle as a replacement for about $550,000.

The topic will be brought to the Select Board again soon. The town is currently in budget talks.

"We took a look at the capital plan as we had proposed it just two weeks ago," Elwell said. "Obviously, the sacrifices that would have to be made to take half a million dollars out of that plan to buy a pumper would be very severe, affecting multiple different other requests that have benefit to the community in various ways."

The town has four pumpers, including the damaged vehicle. Two of them are considered reserves. Losing one would compromise the town's pumping capacity, according to Elwell.

With the number of volunteer firefighters dwindling in outlying towns, there was concern about relying more on other departments in a mutual aid agreement. That could leave Brattleboro vulnerable in the instance of a structure fire, Elwell said.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – Fort Wayne’s ambulance service will stay with the Three Rivers Ambulance Authority. The Fort Wayne Fire Department and TRAA announced a compromise plan Thursday.

“This is a reasonable compromise for what we are trying to accomplish,” fire chief Eric Lahey, said. “Our goal has always been making a significant improvement in the delivery of care at no extra cost to the citizens.”

Starting in January, the fire department will start having a paramedic on the engines to provide more advanced medical care at the scene before the TRAA paramedics arrive. To cover the cost of that change, the department said it needed to acquire the entire ambulance service.

“Putting advanced life support (ALS) on every engine comes at a cost. In order to recoup those costs, we have to absorb the entire system. We cannot get revenue from delivering ALS care. You have to transport the patient in the eyes of Medicare and Medicaid and insurances providers to collect revenue, Lahey explained.

Now, under the new agreement, TRAA will cover the costs of equipping the engines, training the firefighters and staffing the engines with ALS level of care. Lahey said that will be about $400,000 a year and will come out of TRAA’s reserve fund, which currently has around $5 million in it. The agreement is for three years and either side has to give two-year’s notice if they want to end it. That means it will last for at least five years.

“The reserves will be replenished through revenue streams,” Lahey said. “There are also controls in place that if at any point the reserves aren’t being kept where they should be, we can dissolve the agreement.”

Swenson said the Latham engineering firm C.T. Male Associates will determine the “parameters” of the asbestos inside the building. Once that is done, the city will seek bids for its removal.

Swenson said this week he was uncertain how long the asbestos study would take to complete. Once the asbestos is removed, the study will focus on the structural condition of the building, Swenson said.

Swenson has said that C.T. Male will be paid $52,850 for the studies, including a structural report that’s expected to be completed by May 2017. Additional money will be spent to pay a monitor to oversee the removal of asbestos in the building.

The city’s hiring of C.T. Male follows a report earlier this year by Peak Engineering that said steel reinforcements in the firehouse’s concrete floor, where fire trucks are parked, have probably deteriorated significantly.

“This investigation revealed a unique reinforcement layout that is not consistent with conventional practices,” the report said.

The report said a section of the slab concrete was “saw-cut and chipped out,” revealing that some steel was missing.

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