County to kick in $20,000 for city vehicle

BANGOR – Penobscot County officials will lend their support, including a financial hand, to the city of Bangor’s purchase of a more than $200,000 vehicle intended for extreme emergency situations.

The Penobscot County commissioners this week approved contributing $20,000 to the vehicle that Bangor Fire Chief Jeff Cammack said could be up and running in four to five months. The funding was less than the $35,000 the city had requested to reach its goal of $254,000, the amount it initially was decided was needed to build the emergency vehicle.

“We want to help Bangor, but we just don’t have the money,” Penobscot County Commissioner Stephen Stanley said earlier this week.

The county is feeling the pinch already from improvements it needs to make to its operations, from adding corrections officers at the Penobscot County Jail to upgrading its communications system.

The amount the three commissioners approved was the same amount that the city of Bangor funded itself for the project. Much of the cost of the vehicle will be covered by a $200,000 federal Fire Act grant, Cammack said. The city was required to put up a 10 percent match, or $20,000.

Cammack said Thursday he appreciated the county’s decision to help fund a vehicle that the county would benefit from.

“I’m very happy with the $20,000 that the county commissioners agreed to give us,” Cammack said Thursday.

With the county’s funding taken into consideration, the project is still short about $15,000. Cammack said his department will now look at where it can squeeze some savings and perhaps at what things may be cut.

The vehicle won’t be your ordinary emergency response vehicle and is not intended for everyday fender-bender accidents. Instead, it will house the equipment used by divers for underwater rescues, cold weather rescues, heavy-duty airbags for lifting equipment or debris that is blocking rescue efforts.

“This is not for your everyday accidents,” Cammack said. It is intended for use at incidents such as multiple-casualty accidents where people have been trapped for hours and traditional equipment isn’t working.