Milo considering pumper truck purchase

MILO — The Milo Fire Department may have found a replacement pumper truck in suburban Nashville, Tennessee.

Following last month’s special town meeting authorizing the Select Board to borrow up to $250,000 for a minipumper or rescue pumper, Fire Chief Mike Harris located a truck in Tennessee. Several firefighters will travel south June 25 to inspect the vehicle. 

“It’s pretty slim pickings at $250,000,” Harris said during a June 10 select board meeting. 

The 2020 model with a 1,500 gallon pump and 13,000 miles is for sale by a department 15 miles outside of Nashville. This is exactly what Milo is looking for, Harris said.

The Tennessee fire department accepted the $250,000 offer, and Milo has sent in a refundable $25,000 deposit to hold the truck.

The vehicle is for sale because every five years the Tennessee fire department buys a new fire truck, Town Manager Bob Canney said.

Several firefighters will fly out June 25 and spend a day and a half testing the truck. 

At the special town meeting, the Select Board authorized $250,000 for a term of up to five years at an estimated interest rate of 4.912% for a minipumper or rescue pumper. The interest on the $250,000 principal is an estimated $32,464.

In April the department’s minipumper overheated during a fire on Elm Street. 

The 25-year-old vehicle with a standard transmission lost a cylinder head, with repair estimates between $15,000 and $20,000.  The truck is currently out of service. The body is separating from the chassis and would cost another $20,000 to $25,000 to fix.

A brand new vehicle would cost over $1 million.

The approved special town meeting article included an amendment to use $200,000 from fund balance to pay off a department rescue truck’s remaining debt, eliminating one fire department payment. 

In other business, Canney gave an update on the forthcoming $7.2 million public safety building off outer Park Street.

“The public safety building is humming right along, I am not going to say smoothly,” he said.

There have been some problems with the engineer, but the building is still on schedule for completion in early September.

Budgeting and using up contingency are concerns, Canney said. He said contractor Sheridan Construction Corporation of Fairfield has had some questions go unanswered by the engineer.

“It’s still on target and looking good,” the town manager said.

Building offices are being sheetrocked and windows and doors are in. Ceilings will be installed soon.

The new building will house the fire, police and public works departments. Milo can spend up to $6,375,000 in USDA funds for the public safety building, which will be located at the business park, less than a mile from the 100-year-old town hall where the fire and police departments are currently located.

The installation of a sidewalk along Penquis Drive, off West Main Street to the Penquis Valley School, needs to go out to bid and hopefully the project can be awarded during the July select meeting, Canney said. The goal is to have the sidewalk in place before classes resume in late August.

The state has awarded Milo a $100,000 Community Enterprise Grant for the sidewalk installation. Students would be able to walk to and from the building on the right side and not be in the road with all the vehicle traffic.

The town needs to provide an additional 25% of the total to meet a matching requirement, which would come out of the paving budget. Public works would do some demo work to help keep costs down.

This is the third such grant in four years awarded to the community. Milo used a similar grant to fund parking lot improvements several years ago and sidewalk repairs in 2025.

The plan is to apply for more funding in 2027 for a sidewalk leading to Milo Elementary along High Street.

The economic development advisory committee is working on an information kiosk downtown, committee member Breena Bissell said. The 14-by-14-foot kiosk would be located on a vacant lot next to Elaine’s Bakery & Cafe.

The group has raised $5,000 and a donor will match this total and any monies left over can go to other projects.

Construction is set to start in July.

Inmates from the building trades program at Mountain View Correctional in Charleston will build the kiosk — the design resembles a train depot in a nod to the railroad heritage — for about $5,000. The information center will include waterproof bins for maps and handouts.

The intention would not be to take people away from the Milo-Brownville & Points North Visitors Center, but instead the kiosk would help direct people to the center, Harrigan Museum, historical society, library and other attractions. 

Cleanup, removing brush and trash, took place at the Ferry Road landing. 

A sign detailing the site history — noting that a ferry once crossed the Piscataquis River — will be erected. 

Many Black Fly Festival attendees did not know this fact about the origin of the road name, Bissell said.

A welcome sign is planned with Harris Lumber contributing material and Penquis Valley School students to paint it.

“We like to make the connections whenever we can,” Bissell said.