Fire Department Gets New Engine. What Was Final Cost? What Caused Delays?

The fire department will FINALLY get their new engine this weekend after MUCH delay. Let’s look at the timeline of costs:

In 2021, the City had $400,000 earmarked for a new fire engine [Dispatch front-page news 2-17-23]

Dispatch article on April 1, 2022:The vehicle is now estimated at $942,000, which [former fire chief, now long-gone Jeff] Smith said is more than the $800,000 the fire department budgeted. Smith said in meeting with deGraffenried, “He told me, with the way everything is going with COVID, it’s really not unreasonable that the cost has gone up that much”

The company told the City “it would take 14 months to build and ship the vehicle” – thus placing delivery around July of 2023 [Dispatch article 4-1-22 page 12].

August 14, 2023: a few members of the FD were supposed to travel to South Dakota to fetch the vehicle. This seemed odd to me, because the company was going to “build AND ship the vehicle” originally, according to the Dispatch article. You’d think for almost a million bucks, they’d deliver the fucking thing to your front door with a bow on it.

Lampasas Fire Chief Jeff Smith, left, and engineer Jared Payne of the Lampasas Fire Department stand in front of the city’s new Spartan NXT Pumper. 

Then suddenly – that didn’t happen. There was a massive delay. There WAS no new fire truck to drive down from South Dakota. Naturally, Finley neglected to mention or explain this huge eight-month delay in the million-dollar fire truck.

(Kind of like the RKJ elevator, right Finley?)

So the questions are:

#1 – Why was this delayed for 8 months?

#2 – What was the final, all-in cost for “the very first custom-built” engine the City has ever purchased??

I have made open records requests for the answer. Stay tuned.