ANDERSON — The Anderson Fire Department unveiled the newest addition to its fleet Monday, as Southview Elementary School students gathered around the new fire truck as a surprise before the school closes for good. Mayor Kris Ockomon, Fire Chief Dave Clendenen and other city officials and firefighters gathered at the school to show off the new truck and allow students to pose for a school photo with the truck taken from 100 feet in the air by a photographer lifted by the department’s ladder truck.
The new red-and-black pumper truck can hold 750 gallons of water and was purchased for about $280,000 with ambulance user fees.
“That user fee really saves us, because if (we didn’t have it), it would be back on the taxpayers,” Deputy Chief Dave Cravens said. “I couldn’t go to the City Council and say I need $300,000 to buy a fire truck.” The new engine will go to the No. 6 fire station on 29th Street and replace a 10-year-old truck. Cravens and Deputy Chief Jerry Burmeister, who negotiated the deal for the truck, try to buy new vehicles to save on maintenance costs, which could be $20,000-30,000 a year.
“You hate to be in the middle of a fire run and the transmission falls out in the middle of the road,” Cravens said. Burmeister said before the user fee was instituted in 1996, the department dealt with old, rusty trucks because it couldn’t afford to buy new ones with tax money. “We had rusted equipment, we had broken down trucks,” he said. “This way, all that (user fee) money goes into a separate fund and that’s where we get the money.”
The new engine likely will be one of the busiest ones; the one it replaces went on about 80 percent of the department’s 18,000 runs last year. Anderson has more runs than some nearby towns with similar populations, like Fishers, because it has an older population and households with less money to replace old appliances that cause fires, Cravens said.
The pumper is the second fire truck the department has purchased with user fees since the start of the Ockomon administration in January 2008. It also bought a new ambulance. Cravens said the department follows Medicare and Medicaid guidelines on how much to charge for ambulance usage, and it also depends on whether the patients need basic or advanced life support. “Most people have insurance, so you’re not creating a hardship on the taxpayers,” he said.
The fire truck’s appearance at Southview was a gift from the school’s parent club to the students, who have to see their school close at the end of the year due to budget cuts. “With these being one of the schools that’s going to close, it was just something special we wanted to do for them,” parent club president Michelle Drechsler said. “They were very excited.” Ockomon spoke to the students after they got their picture taken with the truck. “We’re all sad about Southview closing, but we wanted to bring a happy time by having the fire truck here,” he told them.
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