Council to Decide on New Fire Engine, Future of Redevelopment Agency at Tuesday's Meeting

After 22 years and more than 120,000 miles, one of the Fire Department's engines is getting ready to put out its last fire.

The City Council will vote at whether to purchase a new fire engine that could be up and running as early as this month.

City Manager Connie Jackson has been negotiating an agreement for the last year for a Seagrave Marauder II at a cost of $540,306, and staff is recommending that the city lease to buy the engine since only about $342,000 is available in an equipment reserve fund to pay for it. The new fire engine will be similar to the 1988 Pierce fire engine that is being replaced, said Fire Chief Dennis Haag.

To pay for the new engine, the city is expecting to use $300,000 from the equipment reserve fund as a down payment and then finance the rest from JP Morgan Chase with a seven-year loan and 2.95 percent interest rate.

The city will also have to pay a whopping $44,575 sales tax charge, which will come out of equipment reserve funds that continue to accumulate over the years, for the new engine.

In other action, the council will be voting to approve an agreement that will lead to a design for a decorative archway for the new underway in downtown. The cost of the design services is expected to cost $250,000 and will be split evenly between the city and Caltrain.

The council will also be holding a public hearing on whether to . 

With the recently passed state budget, Gov. Jerry Brown signed two bills, AB1X 26 and AB1X 27, aimed at eliminating redevelopment agencies. 

The first of the two new laws would shutter all of the states 390 redevelopment agencies Oct. 1.

The second is a pay-to-play measure, of which the city is favoring, that would allow agencies to continue to operate at a greatly diminished level if their cities pay their portion of the $1.7 billion savings created by eliminating the agencies in the new fiscal year, and, starting in 2012-13 and continuing in perpetuity, part of $400 million.

For San Bruno, the tab would be $3.2 million this year, and a yearly payment of $800,000 going forward.

“Many redevelopment agencies have notified us that they cannot afford the ransom payment and will cease to exist,” John Shirey, executive director of the California Redevelopment Association, recently told San Bruno Patch.

The California League of Cities filed a lawsuit in July challenging the constitutionality of the two laws.

Check out this video on Vimeo of the Fire Department's final inspection of the Seagrave engine in Wisconsin.