City Council approves $5 million request from Jackson Fire Department

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Jackson City Council met Tuesday morning. The biggest item on the agenda was a $5 million request from the Jackson Fire Department.

City council members quickly and unanimously approved the proposal to replace seven trucks in the fire department’s fleet.

“The aging equipment didn’t just sneak up on us. We knew it was coming,” Jackson Fire Department deputy chief Don Friddle said.

The trucks they plan on replacing are 28-years-old or older. The average national age of replacement is 15.

They’ve also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in maintenance.

Friddle told city council members that one of their trucks has to be towed to Memphis to complete about $18,000 in repairs.

“When you talk about $300,000 a year in maintenance? That’s a lot of maintenance cost,” councilman Gary Pickens siad.

The City of Jackson is still working to save money, though. However, Friddle says the fire department has a cost-effective plan.

“Last year our cost was $370,000 just to keep the fleet running, so we got a large amount of savings there,” Friddle said. “The other is just through attrition of firefighters retiring. Nobody likes to hear the reduction of staffing levels, but I’m very comfortable with the number of personnel we have currently.”

The fire department plans to make payments of a little more than a half-million dollars every year for 10 years for the trucks.

“Essentially this will be no cost to the city. The funds that were allocated to the fire department are going to be redirected in the fire department to pay for this,” Pickens said.

The fire department plans to have some of these trucks on the road by the end of the calendar year.

This was just the first reading of the budget request, but it does require two readings to pass.

Mayor Scott Conger has called a special meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 13 to try to push the request through to be able to get the new equipment by the end of the year.