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City Council pores over Nevada Fire Department budget
The Nevada Fire Department is an equipment-intensive department, City Manager JD Kehrman told the city council during a budget work session Tuesday evening.
Kehrman told the council that the fire department is the third largest expenditure from the general fund and that he is projecting an increase of about 3.2 percent in their budget for 2012.
The fire department has 13 members, including Fire Chief Robert Benn.
All equipment and vehicles lose value over time; and in the case of large vehicles like fire trucks, after a certain point they have no value. That is why when the city donated an old fire truck to a county fire department, there was only one taker. The fire apparatus get to a point at which they are not dependable and cost more to maintain than to replace, he said.
"The old Freightliner fire truck that was moved to backup this year is currently out or service," Fire Chief Robert Benn told the council.
He said when they tried to start it, it would not run.
And a lot of the other equipment requires periodic replacement and testing to be sure it will do its job and will not endanger the firefighters, Benn told the council.
"All of the pumps on the trucks must be tested annually. The ladders are tested every year," he said.
It is not only the aerial ladders that are tested. The 240 feet of ground ladders the department has also are tested, he said.
Then once a year the department closes off the parking lot at the city hall to test their hoses.
Benn said that the department has not had a regular program of replacing the department's hoses and that led to having hoses fail. So, he explained, starting in 2011 he instituted a program to replace 10 percent of the departments hoses annually.
While a lot of the equipment firefighters use is relatively low tech, there is a growing amount of equipment that incorporates sophisticated technology. Things like chemical detectors and monitors for carbon monoxide and other gases. These all require periodic calibration.
Benn said that they have recently started using iPads instead of the Toughbook computers they had been using. The iPad costs about $800 each. One Toughbook costs about $4,000.
There are apps available for the iPads that will let the department replace piles of printed documentation they have had to carry with them about hazardous materials and other information with an iPad, he said.
And the availability of 3G cell phone technology will let them access other information they find they need but do not have with them on the Internet, he told the council.