By Scott Taylor
The Sun Journal
AUBURN, Maine — City Councilors agreed Monday that most of the problems they’d heard about concerning firefighters using trucks to run errands had stopped since the matter became public.
Police Chief Phil Crowell said the new policy is for firefighters to use other vehicles — including a pickup truck, fire inspection vehicle and a truck loaned from the police department — to run errands.
“The old policy was, if they were out on a call or coming back from an inspection, they could stop at the store,” Crowell said. “That’s how we did it for years.”
That policy became an issue during budget discussions. Councilors Dan Herrick and Mike Farrell said they’d heard numerous complaints from residents who had seen firetrucks at local markets, hardware stores and ice cream shops. It came to a head when Farrell followed a fire truck driving around southern Auburn and made a video recording of it and posted it to YouTube.
Monday, Herrick said he was no longer hearing complaints.
“As long as we have good people managing the situation, I think they can handle it,” Herrick said.
Councilors also said no to an idea to equip city vehicles with GPS tracking devices. Deputy Police Chief Jason Moen presented a plan to monitor the movement of 18 police and fire vehicles, letting dispatchers see exactly which vehicles were close in case an emergency response was needed.
But Councilor Herrick said he was most concerned about where the city’s public works vehicles where at given moment.
“If we have good management, and if everybody does their job and comes in, gets their orders and goes where they are supposed to I have no problem,” Herrick said. “If we have management in place to handle these problems, I don’t see the point in spending a whole lot of money on this.”
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