The Kenai City Council adopted a resolution approving the use of the equipment replacement fund and authorizing the award of a contract for the purchase of a replacement ambulance for the Kenai Fire Department. One of the fire department ambulances is due for replacement citing the high mileage and, as a result, sufficient funds are available in the equipment replacement fund to purchase a new ambulance.
Kenai Fire Chief Tony Prior tells KSRM:
“Major equipment like the ambulance, the fire engines, loaders, those kind of things in the city, once we purchase them, it automatically begins, we start saving money to replace those on a serviceable life for whatever piece of apparatus it is. The current one that we’re replacing is a 2003 Ford Ambulance. It’s both reached its mileage and age to be replaced and so we went out to bid, did an RFP for companies that wanted to bid on it. We received three of them. After scoring them, based on criteria that we set up, Braun North West was the top scorer.”
Prior says the build time for this ambulance is extended as equipment from Dodge, Ford, and Chevy have been a major supply chain problem for these ambulance manufacturers:
“The problem is right now is getting the chassis, they’re still backed up. We may be somewhere in the neighborhood of about 420 day build time on them. It takes a little bit nowadays to get them built and made.”
Prior discusses the process by which the Department goes about replacing equipment:
“A lot of it is dependent upon mileage for the ambulance, more so the years for the engines because they don’t get anywhere near as much use as the ambulances do, as you can see with the call volume that we have running between 1,400 and 1,500 calls for service per year.”
The resolution approves awarding the contract to Braun North West for a cost of $245,372.