Lehighton’s ladder truck has been started in production at KME.

Borough fire Chief Patrick Mriss informed borough council on Monday that the fire department’s committee chairman recently spoke with KME and discussed some options, one of which could be to possibly extend the warranty.

Council in May 2020 agreed to proceed with a letter of intent to purchase a 109-foot Rear Mount Ladder Truck for the fire department.

Mriss said the ladder truck will replace the fire department’s 32-year-old ladder truck.

Mriss told council in October 2020 that for the third straight year, it appeared as if the fire department had again been passed over for a grant it applied for to get a new firetruck.

He said at that time that even if the department would again apply for the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program through FEMA, the earliest it would get the truck would likely be several years out.

Mriss said at that time it left the department with a 30-plus-year-old ladder truck, and that it was only a matter of time before something major would go wrong with it.

Council then agreed in a 6-0 vote to advertise the department’s 1994 KME Pump firetruck on Municibid.

The purchase of the truck had been discussed for many years, as both the borough and the fire department have applied for Federal Emergency Management Agency AFG Grant for numerous years with hopes of offsetting the costs, only to not receive grant funding year after year.

Council acted on the proposal in order to avoid a 2.5% increase in cost, and that the borough will utilize the funds from the fire equipment tax allocation for the down payment and annual payments on the truck.

In 2002, council had allocated a half-mill to fund future fire equipment purchases, which has continued into this year. In 2019, an additional half-mill was added for fire apparatus/equipment purchase.

REV Group, who purchased KME from the Kovatch family in 2016, announced last month that it will stop production at KME’s Nesquehoning and Roanoke, Virginia facilities in April 2022.

As a result, the decadeslong history of firetruck production in Nesquehoning will come to an end next year, when KME Fire Apparatus moves its operations out of the area.

About half of the 70 KME employees who were terminated last month attended a session held by the Department of Labor and Industry’s Rapid Response team. All but a handful were Carbon County residents, and some had been working there for decades.