Today's Nov 18
www.citizen.com has an article on Laconia's new $879,000 - 100' aerial tower truck, and how the 20 year old truck it is replacing was sold to a Vermont fire dept for $20,000.
Old fire trucks never die, they just get sold off to another fire dept which has less taxpayer money to spend. No doubt, a smaart buy for a small Vermont volunteer fire dept who will renew-repair-replace and keep it going for another twenty years.
Property taxes are not all that based on one's ability to pay, and this truck will be paid with the Laconia property tax.
The Citizen article says that the fire dept has recently been training to operate the new truck at the now closed Freudenberg-NOK car parts factory on Hounsell Ave. Approximately 130 Freudenberg employees lost their good paying, manufactoring jobs there in 2008. As Laconia property tax payers who have lost their jobs they are probably not too pleased paying for a new $879,000 truck when the old one could have been kept going.