Alna Fire Chief Mike Trask has proposed voters at next month’s town meeting put another $50,000 away toward the next fire truck. He anticipates seeking the truck in 2025. The pumper-tanker it would replace turns 30 in 2025, Trask told selectmen Feb. 22.

“A truck after it reaches 30 years in the fire service is ancient. It’s time for them to go somewhere else, do something else,” Trask said. “It’s a safety issue for firemen. They risk their lives to do things with these trucks, when they’re called on,” and the trucks are run hard and, when not being used, are “just sitting around,” he said. 

He did not know what the 1995 one might sell for, but he said it should have some value. It has 28,000 miles on it; it could be a dump truck, he said. If voters say yes in 2025 to the new truck, Trask said, “it’s still a year or beyond that until we get it. So that (1995) truck ... it’ll be 31, before you ever get another truck in.”

The new fire truck could cost half a million dollars, Trask said. First Selectman Ed Pentaleri said the reserve fund for it stands at about $157,000, so this year’s proposed $50,000 would bring it to about $207,000. Possibilities discussed included adding more than $50,000 to the reserve this year and, at some point, proposing borrowing whatever else is needed. 

Besides the $50,000 proposed toward the fire truck reserve fund, department is asking $17,000 for the firefighters’ retirement plan. Department President Beth Whitney explained, last year’s $3,000 request was “artificially low.” She said the program’s first year was “over-budgeted,” since the cost was not known; a lot of the money remained and, as a result, little was needed in the 2023 request.

Whitney said the other reason the request is up this year is the department now has a lot of young firefighters becoming eligible for the plan. “So, that’s a good thing,” she said. “It’s going in the right direction,” Pentaleri said.

The department’s utilities and repairs requests are down a total of $600 from last year’s budget, to $10,250; operations, up $2,683, to $20,600; truck costs, down $250, to $20,000; equipment, up $2,000 to $23,300; radio updates and replacements, flat at $4,100; employee expenses, up $4,519, to $43,912; and the total proposed budget, up $8,353, to $124,162. 

Also Feb. 22, Pentaleri said town reports will be delivered to residents March 9 and, if needed, March 10. To offer to help, contact the town clerk. And Pentaleri remembered longtime Alna firefighter and past selectman David Seigars, who died Feb. 15. “Very kind man, and somebody that’s going to be deeply missed by everybody.”