By KEVIN NEVERS

On the same night that the Chesterton Fire Department advocated—at some point in an uncertain future—the hiring of 24 new career firefighters, at an estimated annual cost of $1,210,000, the Town Council struggled to find a way to pay for a $750,000 aerial truck.

It didn’t find a way, at least not definitively, but members at their meeting on Monday appeared to be favoring—at least those who expressed an opinion—a mix of Cumulative Capital Development (CCD) and Rainy Day moneys.

In the end members did two things. They voted 5-0 to release the bid bonds of the three highest bidders. And they instructed Fire Chief Warren “Skip” Highwood to calculate precisely the yearly payment on the most favorable lease-purchase agreement obtainable, and to do so by their next meeting, April 28, two days before the already extended low bid of $759,950 submitted by Central States Fire Apparatus LLC is scheduled to expire.

There is cash available right now to make a down payment on the aerial of $200,000: $100,000 previously committed by Westchester Township and a temporary surplus of $100,000 in CCD, a fund with a dedicated tax rate used exclusively for the purchase of police and fire vehicles.

Beyond the down payment, however, the funding of the aerial is unclear. The CFD had originally expected to make yearly payments from CCD, but Clerk-Treasurer Gayle Polakowski subsequently crunched the numbers to discover that the annual revenues from the CCD tax rate will yield not much more than $100,000. Of that amount the Chesterton Police Department requires around $75,000 to $80,000 every year to buy new squads to replace its hard-used old ones. In short, Polakowski told the council at its last meeting, for the foreseeable future there will only be around $25,000 annually available in CCD to contribute to the estimated $70,000 yearly payment on the aerial.

Polakowsi did suggest one other possibility at the council’s last meeting but it needed legal review: tapping the Rainy Day Fund, created under state statute for the purpose of depositing surplus CEDIT funds to which the town was entitled in the past but through various oversights did not receive. Polakowski has since learned that payments on the aerial would be a perfectly appropriate use of the Rainy Day Fund, which currently totals $613,656.26.

Between the dregs of CCD and the flushness of the Rainy Day Fund, Polakowski noted, the town probably could swing it. She noted, though, that the Rainy Day Fund is only possibly—not certainly—a renewable pot, and that once the decision was made to use it the purchase of the aerial could conceivably, 10 years down the road, just about exhaust it.

Member Sharon Darnell, D-4th, did not explicitly reveal her thoughts on the matter, but they could perhaps be deduced by her question to Highwood. How much did the CFD spend on repairing the aerial the last time?

Around $1,800, Highwood answered.

“Eighteen-hundred dollars versus $600,000,” Darnell replied. In any case, she said, new legislation is expected once again to change the property-tax landscape. “There’s an uncertainty for me with the bill as far as how much we’re going to get.”

For President Jim Ton, R-1st, the discussion finally was too much. “This is terribly frustrating,” he said, “terribly frustrating. We’ve been horsing around with this thing. I don’t think there’s any question we need this truck and we’re still fooling around with this.”

Ton added that it will be a year before the CFD takes delivery of the aerial, once it’s actually ordered, and that as matters stand the town is in possession of an unreliable piece of equipment incapable of reaching the roof of Chesterton High School in an emergency if it’s even in service.

Although Member Emerson DeLaney agreed with Ton that the aerial is “direly needed,” he also expressed the importance of fiscal responsibility. “I don’t think two weeks is going to make any difference,” he said. “We want to do this right. We have to answer to the people in town. . . . I think we’re doing the right thing by waiting two more weeks.”

“We’re also responsible for the public’s safety,” Ton responded. “We’ve got a year with a piece of junk.”

The Town of Chesterton’s Agents

In other business, members voted 4-0 to appoint DeLaney, Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann, and Deputy Fire Chief Mike Orlich as their official agents under the federal Meet and Confer Act in any discussion with Jamieson Hicks, president of Local 4600 of the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), which represents the town’s career firefighters.

DeLaney recused himself.

Last year the town’s career firefighters received a charter from the IAFF for their own independent local after being affiliated for a number of years with the local which represents the career firefighters of the City of Portage.

Calls

So far in April the CFD has responded to 29 calls, Highwood told the council. In March it responded to 79 and in the year-to-date has responded to 302.

Posted 4/16/2008