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By MACKENZEE SIMMS | Staff Writer

CALERA – On Monday, March 4, both the Calera Fire Department and Calera Police Department presented updates at a regularly scheduled City Council meeting.

The primary item on the agenda of Calera Fire Chief Sean Kendrick was the replacement of outdated firetrucks at Fire Station One. Kendrick approached the Council with a proposed agreement to place an order for new vehicles that the department would purchase in 2027 or 2028.

“That would allow us to stay in a good apparatus replacement plan,” Kendrick said. “It would allow us to move those current trucks into reserve status which would mean that they still get used every day when other trucks are out of service for maintenance or repairs. And we could get rid of the older reserve trucks that we have now. The current reserve trucks that we have now will be close to 20 years old when we replace them and we still use them every day.”

At this point in time, Kendrick wasn’t asking for funds, but rather seeking approval from the  Council to get on the waitlist to get the trucks built. By signing a contract now, the fire department could lock in a price, so that when the fire trucks are finished, the department would pay 2024 prices for 2027 vehicles.

According to Finance Director Kelly Ellison, this would also give the city of Calera time to budget for these purchases.

“I’d like to see (the Council) setting money aside every year,” Ellison said. “You know we have a set number of police cars that we do every year. I’d like to us setting a set amount aside for fire department trucks.”

The new vehicles would not come equipped with the necessary gear, so the cost of new equipment would have to be included in the budgeting process.

“This price is just for the truck,” Kendrick said. “We will have to purchase equipment. A lot of the equipment that we currently use will move over, but we still have to have equipment to keep our reserve trucks ready to go, so that will be a future request.”

The City Council plans to have a more in-depth discussion of exactly how they plan to budget for these vehicles at this year’s budget work session, but approved the fire department to order the trucks due to a clause in the contract that would allow the city to pull out if they could not source the funds.

“We want to get this squared away. It’s something that we’ll have to plan for,” Mayor Jon Graham said. “(Finance Director Kelly Ellison) and I and the chief have talked a great bit about the funding of these and it’s something that we will progressively look at in this year’s budget work session.”

Police Chief David Hyche also discussed the success of their youth mental health class with Christian Life Fellowship. Although Hyche was originally concerned with a lack of people registering, he shared that there was a good turnout.

“We had four of our officers trained in recognizing mental health crisis in youth,” Hyche said. “It was excellent for us to be able to have that training here free of charge. Christian Life Fellowship hosted it, and I want to thank them again.”

In addition, Hyche reported that the CPD held their first vape cessation class. This class comes in addition to the departments routine vape awareness programming and their classes on online safety for kids.

“Once we catch the kids and they go through our court system, we have the vape cessation class,” Hyche said. “It’s a 10-week program where our officers are certified to help these kids get off their addiction to whatever substances they are addicted to. Some of them could be nicotine. Some of them, unfortunately, could be drugs.”

In addition to continuing vape education and awareness, the CPD took a more active role in the battle against teen vaping and brought drug dogs to schools and searched cars in the parking lot

“I was a little nervous that we would have (found) a heck of a lot more than we did,” Hyche said. “We recovered a few, and it’s going to send a message to the kids. We’re teaching them what not to do. We’re teaching them how to get off of it. We’re catching them, we’re running them through our system and we’re giving them training. But in addition to the training, we’re holding them accountable and we’re getting the (vapes) out of the schools.”

According to Hyche, drug dogs cannot detect nicotine, so the vapes found all contained other substances.

“The (vape) problem is everywhere,” Hyche said. “We are certainly not unique. It’s everywhere. And I would rather not stick our heads in the sand. I would rather try to find these things.”

In addition to providing updates, Hyche also presented a resolution to pass the adoption of new police policies, including: 303 Control Devices, 304 Conducted Energy Device, 300 Use of Force and 302 Handcuffing and Restraints.