Excerpts from foxillinois.com:
An amendment filed to the proposed Springfield budget would allocate $6.2 million to buy the fire department seven new rigs. This comes as the current budget has zero dollars in it for new apparatuses. This proposal still needs to be approved by the city council in the new budget and will be discussed on Tuesday.
The money is coming from a few different places: $2 million will be loans, $2 million would come from the corporate fund, and the other $2 million would come out of the money that was dedicated to build four new firehouses. The Springfield budget director said the plan of building four new firehouses this year has to change now.
The fire department’s fleet of apparatus is continually getting older, with 12 of them being over the 15-year benchmark. The money would buy six engines and one truck.
