"It's pretty well to the end of its life span. The next, newer truck is 19 years old ... and it'll be second out for a spare or backup," Lockington Fire Chief Jon Adams said.

In addition to being a newer model, the new fire engine will be able to haul water to fire scenes.

Now, due to rising costs, an additional $50,000 is required to purchase the same equipment, Brown explained. Further hesitation could result in the city's remaining 20-year-old ladder truck breaking down, which could raise local fire insurance rates.

"We have a lot of 3, 4, 5 story buildings in Kingston. A 35-foot ladder will not reach them," Brown said. Tall structures include two hospitals, Yosman Towers, and the County Office Building. "We're eight years overdue," he added, noting that the estimated life span of a typical ladder truck is only 12 years. "It's out of service a lot; it's starting to cost me money, a lot of money."

Rather than being sold, the old truck will be kept on fleet as a reserve backup ladder truck. Brown joked that the last truck KFD sold, had broken down on the way to Wisconsin.

Following common council ratification of the bond, Spartan ERV of Ephrata, PA will construct the truck to spec and deliver the vehicle in 390 days -- in 2018. The vehicle will weigh about 40 tons, with a 20-ton stainless steel ladder 100 feet tall.

The nearly $400,000 contract with Fire Protection Equipment, which was to have been paid for through a federal grant, also included training, Sturdivant said.

The apparatus, which enables firefighters "to navigate through smoky environments," he said, "had yet to go live with actually placing them in service. We were working through the training component." A rumor that circulated on Thursday that some fire trucks also had been repossessed was "not true from what I understand," Sturdivant said.

The repossession followed news that the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority is threatening to suspend trash and recycling collections in Petersburg unless the city makes its first full monthly payment since May and offers a plan to repay the more than $600,000 it owes to the authority by Friday, Aug. 19.

Both revelations, and other reports of city departments unable to obtain operating supplies or losing employees because of pay cuts, seemed to confirm a prediction made by Virginia Secretary of Finance Richard D. Brown during a presentation to City Council on Aug. 3. Brown reported the findings of a team of state auditors and financial consultants who are helping Petersburg sort out its financial problems.

The team had found that as of June 30, the city had an estimated total of about $18.8 million in unpaid bills -- about $4.1 million in funds owed by various city departments to each other, and about $14.7 million owed to outside entities.

The remnant prairie at the Audubon Trails Nature Center is burned about every three to four years. Doyen and Wilkinson said that chapter members must burn sometimes in the fall and sometimes in the spring.