DOVER (WJER) - The city will have a new fire engine in its new northside fire station next fall after securing funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Senator Sherrod Brown recently announced a $50,000 grant and a $430,000 loan from the USDA to Dover to buy a new pumper truck. Fire Chief Russ Volkert says the interest rate is a favorable 3.5-percent, and the city has been saving money for the purchase.

“Annual payments will be slightly less than $100,000, and starting in 1997, most years other than recently when we were putting back money for the first station, the city was setting aside at least $100,000 a year toward the purchase of appartus, the big fire trucks,” he says.

Volkert says the new truck replaces a 27-year-old vehicle and will be the department’s first new truck since 2010.

“You have to obviously keep an updated fleet and stagger your purchases so that you’re not in the dilemma in 20 or 30 years of having multiple pieces of equipment all needing replaced at the same time,” he says.

He says after the purchasing process and assembly, which will take about a year, the new truck will be housed at the northside fire station, which opened this summer.

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