Tupper Lake Volunteer Fire Department’s Unit 165 is seen at the fire station on June 30. (Enterprise photo —Chris Gaige)

TUPPER LAKE — At the Tupper Lake Village Board’s regular July meetings, things appeared to be moving toward a new fire truck purchase.

Now, that appears to be out the window. That realization came on Thursday when village Mayor Mary Fontana, village Trustee and Deputy Mayor Eric Shaheen and village Treasurer Kyle Fuller were meeting to review potential purchase options for the new truck.

“We’re shifting our focus now from a brand-new truck to possibly a used truck,” Fontana said. “We need to make sure that we’re still protecting this community, but we need to do so in a financially responsible way.”

The village is in the midst of trying to replace the Tupper Lake Volunteer Fire Department’s Unit 165 — a pumper truck that was built in 1995 and was purchased second-hand from the Peru Volunteer Fire Department for $30,000 in 2015. The truck remains in service, but is starting to show signs of deterioration, according to a letter from TLVFD that was presented to the village board on May 19.

On Thursday, Fontana, Shaheen and Fuller were trying to figure out how much money the village could put down at signing, then determine how to finance the remainder and what interest rates the village would likely be facing before taking any possible board action to enter into a purchasing contract.

However, the “fire truck fund” — a specific fund meant to provide a reserve for the future purchases of new fire trucks. That’s when Fontana said the three of them realized the $330,000 number was incorrect, and furthermore, that the truck fund had never been formally established in its own account.

Instead, that money was left as part of the village’s general fund. During that time, they were used for a slew of purposes that, while legitimate expenditures in accordance with the general fund’s purpose, resulted in less money being available for truck purchases — as some of it is currently being used to fund other projects.

Instead of the $330,000, Fontana said there’s currently $193,000 that could be used toward the purchase of a new truck. She added that’s not enough to purchase a new one in a financially responsible way. The E-ONE proposal was for $889,287 — the cheapest of the three proposals that the truck committee recommended, and moving forward with that would result in too much being financed and subject to interest payments over time than would be responsible for the village to subject its taxpayers to.

As a result, the village board will not commit to buying a new truck at this time. Instead, Fontana said the village will look to replace Unit 165 with another second-hand purchase, while taking steps to formally create the restricted fund and continue to add to it.

The difference in fund balances stems from previous withdrawals. The full $330,000 is a figure that would have been the fund’s balance if there were no previous withdrawals since its inception in 2016. But there were — $100,000 for a down payment on TLVFD’s Unit 163 pumper truck in 2017, $45,000 for purchasing a used fire truck for TLVFD’s Santa Clara substation in 2019 from the Keene Volunteer Fire Department and $32,000 or a Jaws of Life unit in 2021.

While those withdrawals add up to $177,000, the truck fund deduction isn’t quite that much, as a portion of Unit 163 was paid for from the sale of the old fire station on High Street, and the town of Santa Clara has been paying $5,000 back per year for the substation truck. They will continue to do so until the full $45,000 has been repaid.

Part of the confusion stems from these appropriations being taken from the general fund, since there was no restricted truck fund. However, since they pertain to trucks and equipment, that’s what brought the current truck fund’s inaccurate original $330,000 figure down to the $193,000 that is still in the general fund — but should be in the separate truck fund, and if it were to be removed and placed in its own account, would not compromise village-wide finances across other departments, projects or grant fund fronting, according to Fontana.

She said that the truck money sitting in the general fund were not misused, but misplaced. This led to unclear accounting information and ultimately a green light from the board to open the truck committee based on misinformed information.

“In the almost two years that I’ve been on the village board, we’ve asked, I’ve asked, trustees have asked, the fire chief has asked, ‘How much money is in the truck fund?'” she said. “We’ve all received different answers at different times. We’ve all received the same answer at different times. But it was never the actual, real number — and that’s what’s really frustrating.

“(The village) board authorized the fire department to form a committee to begin the process of purchasing a new fire truck under the guise that we had $300,000 to use, and we didn’t. Had I been met with an honest answer last year when we authorized this committee, I don’t think I would’ve wasted the time of the sales representatives; I wouldn’t have wasted the time of the fire truck committee and I’m embarrassed and I am very frustrated by this process.”

She called Town Supervisor Rickey Dattola and met with TLVFD Chief Royce Cole to inform them of the findings on Thursday.

“We asked them to form a truck committee, and they did everything that we’ve asked them to do and they’ve responded to every call this community has,” she said. “For me to say, ‘You have money to buy a new fire truck but you can’t use it,’ — that’s a really difficult thing for anyone to hear.”

Cole said the TLVFD was “highly disappointed” with the news, adding that would be the department’s only statement on the matter.

Fontana said there were some other issues with keeping the truck fund as part of the general fund. Among these, she said Unit 163’s $100,000 down payment exceeded the amount that would have been in the dedicated reserve then — with the extra being pulled from the general fund that could have been used for but wasn’t expressly set aside for a new truck. The truck fund came out of a fire protection agreement between the town of Tupper Lake and the village of Tupper Lake that was first established in 2016 and renewed in 2020.

In order for fire protection services from the village, the town agreed to pay the village $135,000 that year, with the understanding that $7,500 of that would be put toward the truck fund and the village would match that with another $7,500. While the $135,000 — with increasing contributions in subsequent years — was included in the contract, there was no written language stipulating the truck fund’s creation and matching contributions, which was left as an understanding between the two boards, according to an Enterprise report about the agreement at the time. That can be found at tinyurl.com/4um6n5k8.

Fontana said the truck fund should be its own fund, and the fungibility of having it lumped into the general fund is bad practice.

“In my mind, whether it’s personal finance or municipal finance, when you have an established fund or reserve for a specific thing, it creates its own account,” she said. “That’s what happens with bank loans, or checking or savings — and that’s not what happened.”

Going forward, Fontana said the village board is focused on correcting this practice and establishing a dedicated and separate account for the truck fund, especially as the fire protection agreement comes up for renewal at the end of the year.

“We are putting safeguards in place and we do have a plan to correct this,” she said. “I can’t unring this bell. I can’t fix what was done before my time, but I can correct this moving forward.”