He became mayor in 2000, I was just out of AIT then. Once out of the service, I started attending several of the city council meetings. Some of those were very interesting.
My dad was also the president of the volunteer fire department. I sat in one a few of those meetings when the department got a military truck for free to turn into a tanker truck. The community was in an uproar because the truck was going to be worth almost a million dollats by the time it was complete. I remember laughing hysterically during the first half of the meeting and one of the members of the board asked me what was so funny. My reply pretty much boiled down to The truck is worth almost a million bucks, exactly how much is the fire department spending, how much is the city spending, how much is the county and state as well? They were like, well one million. I was like no, the truck was going to scrap and the Army gave it to the Forrest Service to donate to Rural Fire Departments to help fight Forrest fires on National Forrest Lands. The pumping equipent and holding tanks are being donated by a millitary surplus store because the equipment has been sitting for nearly 2 decades. The paint was donated from a local paint store. And I donated 6 months and my shop into retrofitting the truck and getting it ready to paint. And lastly the fire chief painted the truck. So I asked again, exactly how much did this truck cost to build.
now 4 years later, that same truck developed a few problems, and the same people opposed to the truck wanted to sell it and buy a smaller truck. I then asked if the truck was a money pit? The answer was no. In fact the department has made a Lot of money with said truck, because the forres Service pays the department for use of the truck and 2 fire fighters at $1500 per day up to 90 days consecutive. Going to a smaller truck looses the FS support for the small fire department. I was able to talk them into the $800 the truck needed.
