The Friday Facebook post from the Derby Fire Department.
DERBY – The Derby Fire Department took to Facebook Friday (March 7) to ask members of the Derby tax board to “show up” for a meeting so the department could replace the brakes on a ladder truck.
“We, the Derby Fire Department, are patiently waiting for the city to allocate funds around so we can fix the brakes on the only ladder truck in the city,” the post read. “As it sits in the firehouse for close to three weeks with no progress from the city to move the funds for emergency vehicles.”
Tax board meetings scheduled for Feb. 25 and March 4 had been canceled.
Members of the department were concerned that a lack of action by the city was causing a delay in response time as Derby was relying on departments in Ansonia and Shelton to provide a ladder truck.
The post from Friday is embedded as an image above.
The tax board is scheduled to meet 6 p.m. March 11 to authorize moving money around the department’s budget to cover the approximately $8,000 repair.
Derby Finance Director Brian Hall said the March 11 meeting had been agreed upon by the administration and Derby Fire Department Commissioner Gary Parker. The commissioner is scheduled to unveil a proposed fire department budget at the meeting, too.
Hall also pointed out that the tax board approved a $10,000 transfer within the department’s budget to cover repairs and maintenance at a meeting Feb. 18.
“BOAT is getting thrown under the bus, but for really no reason,” Hall said.
BOAT stands for board of apportionment and taxation, the tax board’s formal name.
Derby Fire Department Chief Thomas Biggs said the department’s ladder truck went out of service for repairs Feb. 16.
Mike Tracz, Jr. of Tracey’s Garage and a lieutenant in the fire department, said he sent a repair estimate to the fire commissioner Feb. 17.
Tracz said he was told by the commission a few days later he could not get a purchase order to authorize the work until the tax board met.
Tracz said the company could have performed the work without a purchase order, but that had the potential of long waits to get paid. Under the prior administration, Tracz said a large tab was accumulated and the city bounced a check.
“If the work is performed without a purchase order, and the money is not there, then the vendor cannot get paid,” Tracz said. “At the end of the day this is an issue that has been happening over the past four or five years. Unfortunately we can’t keep doing work and not getting paid for months and months.”
The Big (Expensive) Picture
While the brake job is expected to be approved and dealt with this week, the kerfuffle is evidence of a larger problem in Derby: the cash-strapped city has a multi-million dollar list of needs in the fire department alone, with no concrete plan to pay.
Derby has fire trucks built in 1990, 2000, 2008 and 2015, Parker said. The ladder truck is from 2004. The aging equipment is now costing more than $100,000 a year in maintenance.
Guidelines from The National Fire Protection Agency put the lifetime of a truck at 20 to 25 years, depending on its use.
Big ticket purchases are handled through the review of the Derby Capital Planning Commission.
Parker submitted a truck replacement plan to the Derby Capital Planning Commission in September 2022. However, the commission, who had not been meeting regularly, lacked a quorum, so no action was taken.
In 2024, he outlined spending $1.5 million a year for three fiscal years to replace trucks – with another $2.2 million in 2027 – 2028 to replace the ladder truck, according to meeting minutes.
That plan did not move forward.
“We’ve drawn out our apparatus the best we can,” Chief Biggs said. “We’ve made plans to not wear them down as much, whatever we can do. But they’re old.”
Meanwhile, the cost of new trucks keeps growing. A fire truck is about $1 million. A ladder truck could be $2 million. Orders take four years to complete, officials said.
“If there was a capital plan from 2019 where the city worked on our plan to replace everything, we wouldn’t be here,” Biggs said.
Both Biggs and Parker said the trucks aren’t the only thing the city has to wrestle paying for.
“Our radio system, I think, is 25 or 30 years old and could fail at any point,” Biggs said. “It’s currently held together by Band-Aids. I’m talking about the towers and the infrastructure. That’s another thing that needs to be replaced or upgraded.”
Parker said the city is making progress on what it can afford. Work just started on making repairs to the dilapidated building on Cottage Street that houses the department’s communication system.
But Parker pointed out the department needs new breathing apparatus, and repairs are needed on the department’s fire houses.
Hall, the city’s finance director, said there are also major needs outside the fire department.
The city’s sewage treatment plant needs major repairs and upgrades, as dictated by environmental officials. Derby single-family homeowners are already paying a $257 annual fee to pay for prior repairs and upgrades to the sewer system – but that doesn’t cover the work needed at the main facility, officials said.
Gino DiGiovanni, Jr., the chairman of the Derby Republican Town Committee, issued a statement Friday criticizing the DiMartino administration on a number of issues.
“When is this administration going to take accountability? According to the City (website), since July the tax board has canceled 6 out of the last 11 meetings,” DiGiovanni’s statement read. “As someone who has served on boards I understand it’s volunteer and we can’t all make in person meetings all the time however, isn’t that why we updated our technology and to make Zoom available for an option to be more transparent?”
Hall said the tax board doesn’t meet if there’s no agenda items to discuss.
The Valley Indy asked Mayor DiMartino to respond to DiGiovanni’s post.
“Listen, he’s going to do what he has to do. We’re not neglecting the fire department in any way, shape or form. We’re here to support the fire department. I’d rather not get into the tit for tat thing with Gino,” he said.
The Valley Indy also asked whether, given the expenses faced by the fire department, the city would have to go out to referendum and ask voters to approve borrowing, as the City of Ansonia has done previously.
Hall said those discussions have been happening in Derby City Hall, and it would be the purview of the capital planning commission who could make a recommendation to the Derby Board of Aldermen and Alderwomen.
DiMartino said a referendum could be in the cards.
“I think we’ll have to go out to bond, and do a bond referendum and let the voters decide how they want to go about doing this,” the mayor said.
He noted the city is still reeling from the aftershocks of bad budgeting.
“We went up on the mill rate last year because of the last administration’s budget woes” DiMartino said. “We’ve straightened out the issues with the budget. There are real numbers in the budget now and I think we’re looking in pretty good shape with the budget, where there won’t be a deficit like last year of $2 million. I think we’ve fixed those issues. But do we have a big pot of money to go to on all kinds of things? We really don’t at this point. We’ve just trying to keep us afloat and move on from there.”
