Agenda Report
Fullerton City Council
MEETING DATE: May 2, 2023
TO: CITY COUNCIL / SUCCESSOR AGENCY
SUBMITTED BY: eric levitt, city manager
PREPARED BY: adam loeser, Fire chief
Raul Godinez II, Interim Public Works Director
ellis chang, administrative services Director
SUBJECT: fire apparatus purchase
SUMMARY
City Council consideration to purchase two fire engines and one fire quint from Pierce Manufacturing.
RECOMMENDATION
Authorize Director of Administrative Services, or designee, to issue a $3,365,706.63 purchase order(s) to Pierce Manufacturing for acquisition of one fire engine and one fire quint with required safety equipment in Fiscal Year 2022-23.
Authorize Director of Administrative Services, or designee, to issue a $1,169,061.25 purchase order to Pierce Manufacturing for acquisition of one fire engine with required safety equipment following Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget adoption.
CITY MANAGER REMARKS
Due to the high dollar amount for these vehicles, the City Manager anticipates two approaches in purchasing the three vehicles. First, the City Manager recommends using a lease-purchase option where annual payments would occur and the City would retain the vehicles at the conclusion of the lease.
In addition, we have both grant applications and an earmark request at both the Federal and State levels to purchase one or two of the vehicles.
PRIORITY POLICY STATEMENT
This item matches the following Priority Policy Statements:
Public Safety
Infrastructure and City Assets.
FISCAL IMPACT
The cost for all three fire apparatus totals $4,534,767.88. Staff seeks City Council authorization to issue purchase orders for one fire engine and one fire quint in Fiscal Year 2022-23 and issue a purchase order for an additional fire engine following the Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget adoption. The Fiscal Year 2023-24 Proposed Budget includes a $150,000 annual set-aside to support future payment of this fire apparatus. Payment is due at time of delivery which staff estimates will occur three to three and one-half years after issuing purchase orders. Staff will evaluate purchase or financing options closer to the delivery time(s) and submit recommendations for City Council consideration.
DISCUSSION
Individual departments or the City’s Equipment Replacement Program, managed by the Public Works Department, manage vehicles and equipment through the Vehicle Replacement Internal Service Fund (Fund).
The City planned to replace a number of the Fire Department heavy apparatus on an as-needed basis through separate requests for appropriation outside of the City’s Equipment Replacement Program due to past budgetary constraints. This left no accumulated depreciation (money accumulated and set aside) to cover the cost of replacement or lease payments for heavy apparatus vehicles. Staff will return to City Council with a request for appropriation for these General Fund vehicles along with any financing options as appropriate.
Equipment Replacement Program Background
The City’s Equipment Replacement Program replaces obsolete equipment, vehicles and equipment in accordance with their projected useful life, projecting replacement costs, setting replacement fees, accumulating replacement funds, receiving new units, installing auxiliary equipment and selling old equipment. The Public Works Department administers this program.
This program provides a central point of control for better accountability of all fleet management related to maintenance, acquisition, specification control, utilization and assignment. It also provides timely acquisition and disposal of vehicles and equipment, therefore maximizing the dollar resources available to meet City fleet needs. The Public Works Department works with the department requesting vehicle purchase to evaluate the vehicle to replace based on multiple factors such as age, mileage, serviceability and continued safety and functionality as well as a review of repair and maintenance and depreciation versus replacement costs.
The Vehicle Replacement Fund is an Internal Service Fund with allocations spread across all departments utilizing vehicles or large equipment. The Public Works Department collaboratively works with all departments to determine vehicle replacement needs and procures and/or purchases vehicles and equipment accordingly. The City may examine lease / purchase options for more expensive vehicles, such as a fire apparatus, to determine whether such an option benefits the City more than purchasing the vehicle outright.
The City suspended General Fund payments to the Equipment Replacement Program during Fiscal Years 2008-09 through 2013-14 due to the recession and limited new purchases to replacing vehicles that the City could no longer maintained in an operating condition.
Fire Department Heavy Apparatus
The Fire Chief’s Roadmap to rebuild the Fire Department identified fire apparatus replacement as one component requiring immediate attention due to aged apparatus and deferred contributions to the Equipment Replacement Program.
The Fire Department requests purchase of three fire apparatus to provide enhanced safety technologies for responding firefighters and increase emergency fire and medical operations efficiency as the team works to protect life, property and the environment in the City of Fullerton and greater Southern California region.
A fire apparatus is an emergency vehicle that firefighters rely upon to transport them safely to and from an incident. A component of a fire apparatus that fails at any time during an emergency operation not only compromises the success of the operation but may jeopardize the safety of the firefighters relying on that apparatus to support their role in that operation. An old or worn-out fire apparatus has no role in providing emergency services in the community. The Department may soon have delayed responses to emergency incidents and may have to borrow apparatus from a neighboring city to cover emergency responses for the City of Fullerton without these emergency vehicles. The Department has seen the total number of incident responses grow from 10,021 in 2003 to 16,209 in 2022, equaling a 62% increase. These engine acquisitions would ensure the Department has the fire apparatus necessary to continue to serve and protect its residents, businesses and critical infrastructure.
The replacement of these three emergency vehicles will also reinforce Department efforts to bring the emergency apparatus fleet within National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1901 standards. The new fire engines will have improved driver technology consisting of side and rearview cameras, Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), complete airbag design for the cab, increased visibility through improved D.O.T emergency lighting and reflective material, overall design to store any equipment or Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) exposed to carcinogens outside of the cab and an E.P.A approved clean diesel engine. These upgrades dramatically increase apparatus performance while making them safer for fire personnel and civilians who share the roadways with the Department.
Ensuring the Fire Department has a reliable emergency vehicle fleet necessary to respond promptly and effectively to fires and medical aids is critical to limiting the threat to life, property and the environment, especially given the City's proximity to the largest California State University and Orange County’s only general aviation airport along with heavy freeway and passenger railway traffic. The rail system is the busiest in the region carrying freight to and from Los Angeles Harbor and poses a risk should a derailment or hazardous spill occur.
Three new fire engines would allow the Department to replace its oldest apparatus which suffer from constant service and repair issues that keep them out of service. Replacing the engines would limit the escalation of these occurrences and free up resources to respond to additional emergencies, improve the Department’s ability to save lives and property and reduce Department dependency on resources from other agencies.
Staff believes the new emergency vehicles will require less service and therefore drastically reduce regular maintenance costs from the budget, due to substantially improved emergency vehicle technology since obtaining the previous vehicles. Lastly, from an environmental standpoint, it cannot be overstated in California that modern diesel engines are more fuel efficient and emissions friendly than their predecessors.
Fire apparatus deployed by the Department are designed, built and maintained to meet that variety of City response demands for up to 25 years. The NFPA established standards for all areas of the American fire service, including fire apparatus service life and replacement. NFPA 1901, Annex D states, “It is recommended that apparatus more than 15 years old, that have been properly maintained and that are still in serviceable condition, be placed in reserve status and upgraded in accordance with NFPA 1912”. Further, “Apparatus that were not manufactured to the applicable current NFPA fire apparatus standards, or that are over 25 years should be replaced.” Common industry practice anticipates departments use fire engines for front-line responses for 15 years and subsequently move to reserve status for five years before full replacement. Common industry practice anticipates departments use ladder trucks for front-line response for 20 years before being moved to a reserve status for the final five years of its NFPA recommended service life because of their high replacement value and specialized uses. When frontline apparatus undergoes maintenance or repairs or are otherwise not available, reserve fire engines or ladder trucks must be functional for day-to-day operations. Reserve fire engines must still meet the same performance standards as a frontline fire engine.
The Fire Department currently operates an 11-unit fleet of heavy fire apparatus. This fleet consists of nine fire engines and two fire trucks ranging in age from 1999 to 2022. The Fire Department, and ultimately the Fire Chief, determine how and where to assign and deploy the units in this fleet to best serve the community. Maintenance Services, and ultimately the Public Works Director, maintains and repairs the fleet. Both departments collaborate to replaceme of any units in the fleet.
The Fire Department needs to retire three fire engines beyond the 20-year service life from reserve status. The Department would retire two 1999 Pierce Dash fire engines and one 2002 Pierce Dash fire engine and then move three of the current frontline fire engines to reserve fire engine service.
Expected manufacturer times for new fire apparatus is approximately three to three and one-half years which would put these 1999 fire engines at 27 years and the 2002 at 24 years. All three units have over 216,000 miles each. The following chart provided in the FFD Roadmap depicts the entire fleet.
Name
Vehicle#
Year
Age
Miles
Location
Replacement Year
Frontline
Apparatus
FE1
349A
2015
8 82,500
Sta.1
2035
FE2
350A
2015
8 97,500
Sta.2
2035
FE3
355C
2007
16 197,500
Sta.3
2027
FE4
363B
2003
20 154,000
Sta.4
2023
FE5
357C
2019
4 35,500
Sta.5
2039
FT6
362C
2022
1 5,724
Sta.6
2047
Reserve Apparatus
FE7
352B
1999
24 217,000
NA
2019
FE8
353C
1999
24 218,000
NA
2019
FE9
351C
2004
19 192,000
NA
2024
FE10
354C
2002
21 216,000
NA
2022
FT6
360A
2002
21 127,000
Sta.6
2027
The Department would replace one of the three fire engines with a straight axle quint fire engine which is a combination fire apparatus that provides the majority of the equipment, hose and water capacity of a traditional fire engine while also providing an aerial ladder for high access capability to reach mid-rise buildings in the City. The City would use $750,000 to offset the cost of this specific apparatus due to a Development Agreement with Goodman Logistics and the scale of the 1.6 million square-foot commercial property.
Replacing these three emergency vehicles would enable the Department to respond to mutual aid emergency incidents continually and confidently with neighboring fire departments, demonstrating that the Fullerton Fire Department has industry compliant, operationally sound safety equipment, capable to respond to multiple, concurrent all-hazard incidents in a safe manner.
Currently, the lack of reliability may delay the time to respond to an incident and thus increase the risk to both community residents and businesses. The Fullerton Fire Department request for three emergency vehicles directly contributes and supports the overall Department mission to protect the lives of the community, their property and the environment.
Next Steps
Staff determined it would manage future replacements through separate requests for appropriation outside of the City’s Equipment Replacement Program because the City removed the Fire Department Heavy Apparatus from management through the Equipment Replacement Program. The City has no accumulated depreciation to cover the cost of replacement or lease payments, as a result.
The City would purchase three new fire apparatus from Pierce Manufacturing through HGACBuy Cooperative Purchasing (Contract No. FS12-19) which requires purchase order(s) to place the order and secure Fullerton’s spot in the manufacturing schedule. The City will make payment at time of delivery, approximately three to three and one-half years out.
Attachments:
Attachment 1 – Two Pierce Fire Engines Quote
Attachment 2 – One Pierce Fire Quint Quote
cc: City Manager Eric J. Levitt
Fire Apparatus Purchase
May 2, 2023 - Page 2