By Andrew McKay 09/07/22
At last night’s special meeting of the Escambia County Commission, the board unanimously agreed to use Cares Reimbursed funds to purchase only one of the two suddenly available aerial fire apparatus brought to them by Director of Public Safety Eric Gilmore, but then three Commissioners refused to purchase the second device. All five easily agreed to spend $1.25 million for a new ladder truck from E-one, but despite the pleas by Commissioners Doug Underhill and Robert Bender, the other three Commissioners Lumon May, Steven Barry, and Jeff Bergosh refused to spend another $1.52 million for a new platform truck. These two apparatus, which were anticipated to be ordered next year by Escambia County, became available after Orange County backed out of their order. This meant the trucks could be acquired at a significant discount (last year’s pricing compared with next year’s pricing) and on a very accelerated time-frame (delivery end of 2023 compared with 2026 under likely normal procurement). Despite the cost and time savings for equipment the County already badly needs, Barry, May, and Bergosh only voted to purchase the ladder truck, with Barry and Bergosh giving no explanation at all for their decision to not purchase the platform truck. Bender tried to explain that one ladder (L5) has been out of service for nearly 600 days and that Perdido Key doesn’t currently have a ladder truck because theirs (L19) is on loan to Pensacola Beach, whose ladder (L13) is out for maintenance. Moreover, both of these devices are unreliable because they are more than a decade old. May’s explanation for his reluctance was that he believes there needs to be more study to identify which pieces of equipment are needed in what areas, but in particular that “people are not getting killed on Pensacola Beach from fires, I mean they’re not, and that’s the truth.”
2 comments
May should have come to the table prepared maybe…
Wait until it hits home with them…