The City of West Sacramento and the West Sacramento Fire Department celebrated the restoration of Engine 45 with a traditional Push In ceremony on Dec. 5. Brought back into rotation through voter passage of tax Measure O, firefighters, police, community supporters and City Council members pushed the engine into the apparatus Bay at Station 45. Photo courtesy of the West Sacramento Fire Department

WEST SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) - The West Sacramento Fire Department is purchasing two new fire engines to help it deal with the effects of the city’s population growth.

The engines will replace the existing older models at Fire Station 42 and Fire Station 45 with apparatus featuring more modern, updated features.

Purchase price for both engines totals almost $2.946 million: $1,776,950 for engine 42 (E42) and $1,168,816.14 for engine 45 (E45). The engines were authorized by the West Sacramento City Council via resolutions at last year’s Sept. 18 and Nov. 6 meetings.

The city entered into a lease-purchase agreement with JP Morgan Chase Bank to finance the engines’ purchases with annual payments of $122,741 over 12 years at interest rates not to exceed 4.25% for engine 42 and 4.5% for engine 45.

The city will take ownership of the fire engines at the end of the lease-purchase term.

The purchase is being made through HGACBuy, a large, national “cooperative purchasing agent” that helps municipalities by offering pre-negotiated contracts and competitive pricing.

“It eliminates the need for individual government entities to conduct separate bidding processes, essentially giving them access to volume purchasing discounts and expediated procurement options while ensuring compliance with government purchasing regulations,” West Sacramento Fire Chief Steve Binns emailed the West Sacramento News Ledger.

West Sacramento’s receipt of a federal Department of Homeland Security Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant in September helped move the fire engine purchases forward. The $5.22-million grant enables the department to pay the salaries of nine new firefighters over three years, with revenues from Measure O, approved by voters last November, picking up those salaries once the grant has expired.

Passage of the measure slated to raise more than $20 million via a sales tax increase also allowed the department to return an engine to service at Fire Station 45 that had been sidelined since 2012, due to a lack of funding. Nine firefighters are required to staff a fire engine, three per shift.

West Sacramento Fire Department has purchased two Pierce Manufacturing Enforcer 1500 GPM Type 1 fire pumper engines using a lease-purchase agreement with JP Morgan Chase Bank. The engines are expected to be delivered in late 2028 or early 2029. Photo courtesy of the West Sacramento Fire Department

The new engines are Enforcer Type 1 fire pumpers built by Pierce Manufacturing, Inc., based in Appleton, Wisconsin and ordered through Golden State Fire Apparatus. According to the Pierce Manufacturing website, the engines will have a pumping capacity of 1,500 gallons per minute. As a Type 1 pumper, it will also have a large tank capacity.

The fire engines also have a long lead-time before they will be received by the city for duty. According to information from the City Council Nov. 6 packet, it will take 49.5 months (four years, one-and-a-half months) to arrive in West Sacramento.

“We have a standard spec (specification) for our fire engines,” Binns emailed. “It is anticipated that this spec will meet the needs of the department and city then (upon delivery) and for years to come.”

While fire engines generally take a long time to build, Binns emailed, factors such as high demand, supply chain issues, a backlog of orders at Pierce and “recent pandemic disruptions” contributed to extending the lead time for both West Sacramento fire engines.

The new pumpers’ pricing also varies because equipment from the older engines will be reused on the new models to save money and requires different mounting capabilities.

“It should be noted that the price per unit is for the fire engine, radios, equipment and the time and materials to mount the equipment,” Binns added.