At the Big Rapids City Commission meeting Monday night, the board of commissioners approved a bid for the purchase of a new fire engine.

The current engine that will be replaced has been in service since 1998.

“I think we are all clear that this is something is vital to the work at the fire department,” City Manager Mark Gifford said.  “It was how we would finance it.”

The city has $250,000 in the current year budget and would plan for about that number for the next two years, completing the purchase of the engine. According to Gifford, it the engine costs about $769,000 and would take about 600 days for it to reach Big Rapids.

“A lot of the smaller manufacturers were bought up and combined into larger ones, (which) causes changes in the pricing structure and then bidding,” Fire Chief Steve Schroeder said on the recent slowed process making fire engines. “They are also seeing increased delivery times because there's still a lot of fire trucks to manufacture. The cost continues to go up with manufacturing and the demand is up, (creating) somewhat of a perfect storm.” 

The voted passed unanimously with five votes.