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North Coffee chief details equipment upgrades, says program freed local funds
Summary
North Coffee Fire Chief Greg Rydham summarized five years of equipment purchases tied to the smoke-alarm program — from SCBAs to new trucks — and said local funds were freed for other priorities.
Greg Rydham, chief of the North Coffee Fire Department, provided a five-year inventory and said program funds helped purchase major items the department previously lacked. “We've bought 12 complete set SCBA's ... 13 sets of turnout gear ... and we've replaced 5 trucks in the last 7 years,” Rydham said, listing cylinders, pagers and thermal imagers among the purchases.
Rydham said the program's extra funding allowed the department to allocate other local funds to different needs and that when he took over the department many SCBAs were decades old and untested. He called continued grant support “a great help” and thanked county leaders for enabling purchases that would otherwise have taken much longer.
A committee member commended the department and the program's accounting; the member said purchases are documented through the county office and POs so taxpayers can see how funds are spent. Rydham also noted the department is replacing older equipment as items reach end-of-life and highlighted the cascade filling system — cited at about $40,000 five years ago — as a past priority purchase.
