A unanimous vote allowed Dixfield to purchase the 1985 Seagrave
ladder truck.
DIXFIELD – At Monday night’s selectmen meeting, fire Chief Scott Blaisdell got the nod to replace the town’s aging ladder truck four years ahead of schedule.
By a 4-0 vote, officials passed Selectman Eugene Skibitsky’s motion, allowing Blaisdell to use $45,000 from the reserve equipment account and $5,000 from the chief’s budget to buy Lisbon’s 1985 Seagrave ladder truck.
The motion was contingent on general board consensus that a town meeting wasn’t required to approve the method for buying the firetruck.
Selectman Stephen Donahue was absent.
During discussion after the vote, Skibitsky tacked on amendments to his motion, noting that the deal was contingent on the Seagrave passing a state certification test. He also didn’t want the chief to spend more than $50,000 for the truck.
Initially, Skibitsky asked if townspeople had to approve using reserve equipment account money in a town meeting before Blaisdell could buy the ladder truck to replace Dixfield’s 1956 ladder truck.
Town Manager Nanci Allard said she believed the chief could use reserve funds without voter permission because voters put the money into the account to replace the 1956 truck four years from now.
The matter wasn’t on the board’s meeting agenda. Instead, it was one of several topics from Blaisdell’s monthly department report to selectmen. He had discussed the matter in depth at a previous selectmen’s meeting.
The need then as it was Monday night was to take advantage of Blaisdell’s finding of a ladder truck that better fit inside the fire station.
The 1956 truck is 44 feet long. The fire station bay is also 44 feet long. Lisbon’s 1985 automatic-shift ladder truck is 36 feet, 7 inches long, and 9 feet, 9 inches tall. It has a 100-foot rear-mounted aerial ladder. The 1956 standard-shift truck has an 85-foot-long, center-mounted ladder.
Until last weekend, there was a question about whether the Lisbon truck would fit in the station bay due to its height. Blaisdell said Monday night that it did, with room to spare.
“It fits in our station as snug as a bug in a rug,” he said.
tkarkos@sunjournal.com
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