Fire Truck and Harbor Dredging Funding Win Essex Town Meeting Approval
By Charles Stannard
ESSEX–Funding for an aerial ladder fire truck and harbor dredging won quick and unanimous approval Wednesday from voters at a town meeting.
About 40 residents turned out to act on proposed expenditure of $234,000 for the fire truck and $130,000 for dredging of the town harbor. Both expenditures were approved on unanimous voice votes after brief discussion.
The Essex Volunteer Fire Department plans to purchase a 1994 Sutphen Corp. model TS100 ladder truck from the Plam Beach, Florida fire department. The truck has a longer ladder and a larger platform than a ladder truck that was purchased by the town in 2000.
Fire Chief Paul Fazzino said the used truck is a “great opportunity,” for the town because a new ladder truck would cost about $1.4 million, while upgrading existing truck would cost about $700,000. The town and the department had been setting aside money in a budget sinking fund with a goal of acquiring a new ladder truck in 2011. Fazzino said the truck is expected to be delivered to Essex in November.
The $130,000 for the harbor dredging includes funds in the harbor management commission’s budget sinking fund, and an advance from the town of $52,667 that will be repaid over the next thrtee years by a group of harbor-related businesses, including Essex Island Marina Inc., Essex Boat Works Inc., Brewer Dauntless Shipyard, and the Essex Yacht Club.
First Selectman Phil Miller said a new round of U.S. Navy-sponsored dredging of the Thames River in Groton had given the town an opportunity to perform additional harbor dredging and dispose of spoils from the work in conjunction with the Navy project at an approved location in Long Island Sound off New London. Use of this disposal site allows the work to be done at a significant savings to the town.
Miller said the work. which is expected to be done this fall, would expand on dredging done in the fall of 2007 that was the first dredging of the town’s harbor siunce the late 1970s.
