Chief Says New County Fire Truck Tops List of Immediate Priority Needs of Department

April 26, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

A new county fire truck!

During Thursday night’s meeting, County Fire Chief Donny Green asked the budget committee to allocate from the county’s capital projects fund in the 2024-25 budget year $425,000 for a new or demonstration (with warranty) fire engine.

With the support of the County’s Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee, Chief Green laid out for the budget committee the three most immediate priority needs of the county fire department and a new fire truck is first on the list followed by the need for 75 portable radios for the new TACN system if not funded by a grant and an additional allocation of funds to put toward a proposed new public safety building to house a fire truck in the Wolf Creek Community.

“After considering the greatest needs of the DeKalb County Fire Department and receiving concurrence with the Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee at our April 4 quarterly committee meeting, we are recommending these immediate priority funding requests to the Budget Committee for capital projects that will provide the most critical overall benefits to the communities we serve”, said Chief Green.

According to Chief Green, the county has not invested in a new fire truck since 2012 and its important to do so occasionally to stay on a replacement schedule.

“The first immediate priority need, as recommended by me and the Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee is a new fire engine in the amount of $425,000,” said Chief Green. “That is not a fire engine that we would specify. Its one we would probably have to buy that is a spec unit already built. The reason we would probably go with that is it will probably take way less time to get one of those delivered as it would if we ordered one with our detailed specifications. I have talked to three manufacturers and the turnaround time to get one of those after placing an order is anywhere from 18 months to 24 months,” said Chief Green.

“The last time the county bought a new fire truck was 2012. We have 11 of our 17 front line apparatus that are over 20 years old but I don’t pretend that all 11 of those need replacing right now. I don’t really go by age or even miles on them. I look at functionality of the truck and how long we can make it work,” Chief Green explained. “We are not too good to buy used trucks. Most of our fleet came from used apparatus but in this replacement cycle we have to occasionally put in a new truck or we will have all of our fleet at one time that becomes very aged. That is the reason I am asking for a new truck this year. Two years ago we got a Rural Development truck on a grant and that helped in our fleet but we are a large department with 12 stations and a lot of apparatus we need to keep a rotation on. We cannot continue to have across the board old apparatus and if we do we will hit the wall at once and have to start looking to buy five or six trucks at a time instead of one,” Chief Green continued.

“I haven’t asked for a new fire truck in a while but I think its time. This would be a spec truck. A general truck. If we were to spec one and order specifically like we would want it designed the price would be over $500,000 so we are trying to be as efficient and conservative as possible in asking for a new truck and keep it as basic as possible while still having the functionality we need for a new fire truck,” said Chief Green.

If the county funds the purchase of a new fire truck, where would it be stationed?

“The way we place our trucks, we have an order based on which station is due to get the next truck, how old their truck is, and if they have ever had a new truck in their station before. This truck would be due to go to the Cookeville Highway Station. That station has never had a new truck. They have always had the hand me downs. All the five original stations that were started in 1975 have all at some point received a new truck except for the Cookeville Highway Station,” said Chief Green.

With a new fire truck, one of the older engines could be used to replace the department’s reserve truck that is now out of service.

“Our reserve engine that we have right now has been out of service for over six months,” explained Chief Green. “It’s a 1987 truck that we got from Brentwood when Mike Foster was County Mayor but we cannot find parts for it now. When we had our last fleet apparatus check done that we do annually through a third party company, they failed the truck and told us to not put it back on the road so we don’t have a reserve truck,” said Chief Green.

“ISO (Insurance Services Office) gives us points in our insurance rating for having a reserve apparatus in our fleet, so we need to have a reserve truck. Operational wise, if I have any one of our 12 stations fire trucks go out of service without a reserve truck, I don’t have a spare to slide in and take care of that which happens frequently. Last year we had an engine go down and we were without it for about eight months and that station was without coverage. Its important to have a reserve truck especially for a fleet our size with 12 stations that covers 305 square miles. This new fire truck will let us take one of our oldest apparatuses out of service, put it into reserve status, and get rid of the old reserve truck that is not working,” added Chief Green.

The budget committee has not yet acted on Chief Green’s request.

April 26, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

If you didn’t beat the February 29 deadline in paying your 2023 DeKalb County property taxes you need to settle up. But now you have to add interest accruing at 3% or 4.5% as of May 1.

During Monday night’s regular monthly meeting, Trustee Sean Driver informed the county commission that as of Monday (April 22) collections were at 94.75% of almost $12.8 million in DeKalb County property taxes to be collected for the 2023 year which includes property, residential, commercial, personal, and public utility taxes. Collections as of that date (April 22) a year ago were 95.27%. For budgeting purposes, the county expects tax collections each year to be at least 95.5% with a 4.5% delinquency.

As a further reminder to delinquent 2023 property taxpayers, Trustee Driver said 1,700 notices will be mailed from his office on May 1 in an effort to collect the $666,326 still owed for the 2023 tax year.

Meanwhile, Trustee Driver said that on April 5th he turned over to the Clerk and Master in the Chancery Court a total of $81,127 in 2022 delinquent property taxes still owed. The collection rate for 2022 stands at 99.28% of the $11.2 million to have been collected for the 2022 tax year.

April 26, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

The county budget committee is being asked to set aside another $100,000 in seed money from the capital projects fund for the future development of a new public safety building to house a fire truck in the Wolf Creek community.

County Fire Chief Donny Green made this request during Thursday night’s meeting of the budget committee as one of the top three most immediate needs of the fire department with the backing of the county’s Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee which recently met with Chief Green and voted to join him in making the recommendation for this action.

For the last several years the county commission has set aside seed money for future construction of a fire hall at Wolf Creek and that fund has grown to $150,000. Green said adding another $100,000 would just about be enough to build the facility.

‘We started out a few years ago setting aside $25,000. We put back another $25,000 the second year. We later sold some surplus equipment, and I took $50,000 out of that surplus equipment (sales) and put it in that (seed money) fund. We have added to the fund since then and are now up to $150,000. I am asking this year for an additional $100,000 to go into that fund to give us a total of $250,000. Based on estimates, that is what a two-bay station will cost us at the Wolf Creek station. Even that would not give us a fancy building. It would be a wood frame building similar to like what we built at Liberty except this one would be two bays instead of three bays,” said Chief Green.

The proposed location for the safety building is on property owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers under a partnership agreement still in the making between the county and the corps which would permit the county to build this public safety building on a site near Center Hill Dam at the county’s expense, but the Corps would have ownership of the building and bear the cost of utilities going forward. Under terms of the agreement, Green said the Corps wants the facility to be called a public safety building and not a fire hall so that other agencies could make use of it including the TWRA, THP, Sheriff’s Department, and Rescue Squad etc.

The building at this site would be centrally located in the Wolf Creek area to serve communities on both sides of Center Hill Dam.

In the event the budget committee does not put back the additional $100,000 in seed money for the Wolf Creek project this year, Chief Green said he and the County’s Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee are recommending that the funds be set aside for the future development of a district fire station model.

“This model provides for a district station in each of our three fire districts in the county,” said Chief Green. “A district station is one that has a fire engine, tanker, and a brush truck similar to what we have at Liberty. Now that we have the one at Liberty, I would eventually like to have one at Keltonburg and at the Midway station where we already have land and are operating out of buildings that are already way too small. Those were original buildings that were built in 1975 under the Model Cities Grant Program. Back then they were operating with homemade two-ton trucks that were much shorter and smaller than the fire trucks you see today.  At some of our firehalls like Short Mountain, to get in the station you have to raise the bay door because you can’t walk between the bay door and the fire engine. That’s how tight it is. We literally have to cram it (fire truck) in there,” said Chief Green.

Meanwhile, Chief Green, along with the County’s Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee, are asking that the budget committee allocate $640,000 for 75 new county fire department portable radios under the new Tennessee Advanced Communications Network (TACN) system should the county’s regional application for funding through the FEMA Assistance to Firefighter Grant not be approved.

“Our department agreed that we would forego the original local funding allocation for the portable radios, even though it was done for ambulance service and sheriff’s department radios. We (fire department) agreed to hold off on our radios at the time in order to apply for a FEMA grant. That application has been filed and we will know probably in early August or September whether we get funded for that. In our previous discussions, the county commission agreed that if we didn’t get funded under the grant we would come back and revisit funding the radios locally for the fire department. That is 75 portable radios for $640,000. Those radios are $8,500 each. The state contract has taken care of the ambulance service and sheriff’s department and their radios are already ordered and we would be under the same contract. I hope we get the grant. 911 Director Brad Mullinax and I worked hard putting all that together. If we get funded that’s great but if we don’t the reality is we will have to buy the radios or we will be the only department out there without communication abilities,” said Chief Green.

The budget committee has not yet acted on Chief Green’s request.