All of the funding is now in place for the City of Frankfort to buy a new pumper truck for the Frankfort Fire Department.
“The order has been placed and we are now ready to pay for that ,” said Frankfort Mayor Judy Sheets. “We’ve set aside funds from ARPA fund. We did an additional appropriation in city general along with the Redevelopment Commission. So, between those three funds, we should be able to take care of the funding.”
Sheets added this will save the city the cost of interest going up plus it will save the city a higher cost price on the truck. At a recent meeting of the Redevelopment Commission, it was revealed this move will save taxpayers over $400,000 in interest plus an additional $60,000 for purchasing the truck earlier.
The pumper truck will cost $876,837 and it will replace the one they currently have. Sheets said it will be quite awhile before they receive the truck.
In other news, Frankfort Street Superintendent Jason Forsythe talked to the City Council about the possible use of revitalization in taking care of the streets in the future.
“We’ve talked about this rejuvenation before and we’ve done a few streets with it,” said Sheets. “It sounds like it’s a good way to go with our streets and it’s going to be less costly. We can also use the CCMG (Community Crossings Matching Grant) money for that as well. So, I would not be surprised if that came up in next year’s paving.”
What makes this appealing is that now cities and towns are now eligible to use CCMG funds where they weren’t allowed to do this in the past.
The City of Frankfort ran into a funding issues with putting a pedestrian walking bridge going in on Kelley Road between Williams and Alhambra.
“We were looking at going down Kelley Road eventually, putting sidewalks in,” said Sheets. “When we got down that far, we were hoping that pedestrian bridge would be in place. But, at that time, we thought we could do with the 20 percent match. However, INDOT said no to that. Now, it’s too the $400,000.”
A discussion on this matter will be brought up at the first city council meeting of 2024.