How a New York town’s error might save Wilmette about $300,000

An arrangement with a fire department hundreds of miles east of Wilmette will likely save the Village hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Wilmette trustees approved a resolution during the Sept. 8 meeting that authorized the purchase of a 2025 Pierce Enforcer Tower Ladder for the Wilmette Fire Department for $2.1 million.

In late 2025, village staff during a Public Safety Committee meeting offered a detailed update on the current operations of the fire department, including the status of its fleet. During that session, according to a village memo, officials recommended that the department complete hydraulic repairs to its two ladder trucks to “ensure reliability and safety and to support the fire department’s current fire response model.”

Following the completion of those repairs, the Public Safety Committee encouraged creating a long-term replacement plan for the tower ladder vehicles. Then, in July of this year, village staff suggested three scenarios for replacement and refurbishment of the vehicles.

The committee ultimately approved moving forward with pursuing purchasing a used 2025 vehicle. In the time since, the department was able to find an “essentially new” 2025 apparatus that was originally built for the Village of Medina Fire Department in New York.

Medina officials had to declare the vehicle as surplus because it did not fit in their station. That miscalculation, according to Wilmette fire officials, allowed the village to acquire and place a “current-model-year frontline aerial truck into service approximately three years ahead of a new-build delivery” and to shift the recently refurbished model into reserve status immediately.

Medina officials accepted a bid of $2.1 million, a negotiated total that is $300,000 below what Wilmette had earmarked. The total is also, per officials, about $391,000 under the market value of a comparable new-build unit.

The apparatus Wilmette is acquiring was never put into service by Medina’s department and could arrive as soon as this week, officials said Tuesday night.

Two of the other scenarios the department explored included purchasing new tower ladder vehicles. Both of those options were less-than-ideal outcomes given the extremely long lead times and exorbitant costs associated with acquiring new vehicles.

Lambel told the board that the department was receiving estimates of 40 months, or until some point in 2029, for the arrival of a new tower ladder if ordered now. The cost of those vehicles would have also well exceeded $3 million.

Lambel lauded the work of Deputy Fire Chief Michael Scheetz for his research in finding the potential deal with Medina.

“I know from talking to other municipalities that this is a real problem — not just the cost but the waiting and trying to repair these aging vehicles costs a fortune in and of itself and takes a long time,” Plunkett said. “This sounds like a good ending to this story, so thank you all for your diligence and hard work and research in trying to find this.”

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