10-14-2020 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Little Canada Fire Department, Inc. 325 Little Canada Road East Little Canada, Minnesota 55117 Office: (651) 792-7680 Fax: (651) 766-7092 To: Mayor Keis and Members of the City Council From: Don Smiley, Fire Chief Date: October 9, 2020 RE: Command vehicle purchase ACTION TO BE CONSIDERED: Motion to approve the purchase of one Chief’s vehicle. The cost of the vehicle and all related equipment is $63,654.00 BACKGROUND: For any emergency call that the fire department responds to the Chiefs always respond directly to the incident to begin size up and to make a rapid determination of fire department resources needed. The Fire department is an emergency operations department with responsibilities for 24/7/365 response. This 24/7 demand requires the need for Incident Command Response Vehicles assigned to designated personnel. Fire Department personnel as designated by the Fire Chief may be assigned a Response Vehicle to assure they are able to conduct departmental business and respond to emergency incidents as necessary. As there is no way to predict the timing of an emergency incident there is the need for designated staff to have ready and immediate access to a response vehicle. The fire vehicle replacement schedule was updated to include the addition of 3 command vehicles. The plan shows 1 vehicle in 2019, 1 vehicle in 2020, and 1 vehicle in 2021. In 2018 at our annual council workshop, I discussed the issues we had, and are having, in regards to the 3 chiefs using their personal vehicles as emergency vehicles. This issue really came to a head in January of 2018 when my vehicle was struck by a semi-truck while on an emergency incident on the interstate. I sustained $29,000 damage to my personal vehicle and subsequently my insurance carrier cancelled my policy because I was using it as an emergency vehicle. Also, the new vehicles will be marked fire department vehicles and will include important safety equipment such as better emergency lighting and equipment. Since we are currently using our personal vehicles we have limited emergency lighting due to not wanting holes and brackets mounted on our vehicles from the light mounting, also we have purchased vehicle tablets which allows us to see call information, preplans of buildings etc. and we cannot mount them in our personal vehicles due to power issues and the drilling of holes inside the vehicles.