Councillors here are taking another step to standardize fire service in the municipality.
Council recently agreed with a fire committee recommendation to make standard the self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) used in all three fire stations.
Further, it plans to purchase the units through bulk buys with other fire departments in Wellington County. The cost included in the 2010 budget for the SCBA units is set at $150,000.
Mayor David Anderson asked what the potential savings would be through bulk purchasing.
Fire Chief Chris Harrow said the regular price per unit is roughly $7,200. The price they have been able to get through bulk purchasing is about $4,200 per unit. He said over the 25 units, it represents a savings of about $75,000.
Anderson called it another good example of working together. “It will save us a fair bit of coin,” he said.
Deputy-mayor Judy Dirksen asked if the money was already in reserves.
Harrow’s replied, “We have pretty substantial reserves.” He explained the town will borrow from those reserves, with the expectation the money would be paid back within two years.
“It’s not going to affect our budget,” Harrow said. “What we’ve been doing is purchasing a number of air packs each year, so that amount would be used to replenish the reserve funds.”
He added with the expected sale of the used equipment, he was confident the town could raise the funds to cover the withdrawal from reserves.
Turton said from what he understands, “Our Minto leader (Harrow) is one of the pioneers in getting the county to work together and working along with them to bring them up to the Minto standard with the bulk buying for the whole county.”
Harrow said, “Our air packs are obviously very utilized at the fire scenes. What it does is that we call neighbouring departments all the time plus Perth, Grey and Bruce counties.”
If they are all on MSA standards, and the firefighters come out to change air bottles, “It means a bottle is a bottle is a bottle.”
Harrow explained, “It means the firefighters will be able to change bottles without having to worry what brand it is. It means everyone is standard in this end of the world.”
He said it is very helpful when fighting fires to have bottles that can be interchanged and afterwards sort out whose air bottle belongs to which department.
