WAUPUN — The Waupun City Council approved two large purchases at the Waupun Common Council meeting held Tuesday, January 14, 2025.
The first of the two purchases is the long-discussed new aerial ladder truck, which will replace the now over two-decades old current ladder truck at the Waupun Fire Department. The City has talked about replacing the ladder truck for over two years, but the high cost of about $2 million dollars made it hard to come up with a specific plan until now.
“I do want to acknowledge the work of the committee that has spent countless hours doing site visits to different manufacturers across the state, looking at spec sheet after spec sheet, to really try and build a truck that not only meets our needs today but will continue to do so for the 30 year life cycle of that vehicle,” DeMaa said. “One of the biggest things that they had to overcome was find a truck that would fit in the existing building and they did that.”
DeMaa thanked the members of the committee who helped work on the process, including Chief Cliff Teletzke, Mike Beer, Joab Homan, Emily Truttmann, Shaun Turnes, and Wayne Opperman.
Mayor Rohn Bishop joked that when it arrives he’d be the first one to sit in it, then went on to thank everyone for their efforts in getting to this point.
“I know it’s scary because of the amount of money, but it’s one of those things we just have to figure out how to do, and we did,” he said. “Thank you to Casey for helping with the budgeting and making sure we could do it. Thirty years from now when it’ll be time to move to a new one, I hope that people will appreciate what a nice thing we accomplished for the City today.”
DeMaa also thanked the City Council for their support.
The motion on the floor was to authorize the purchase of an aerial ladder truck directly from Pierce Fire Apparatus and Equipment for the amount of $1,820,740.
Motion made by Siebers, seconded by Matoushek, carried 6-0 on roll call.
Immediately following the approval of the fire truck purchase, the Council also approved the purchase of a replacement police squad car through Homan Auto.
According to Police Chief Jeremy Rasch, the damaged squad was their newest vehicle but had been rear-ended by a reckless driver while parked on Main St in town. When the car was brought into a shop, it was totaled.
There were five bids for the sale, which included Homans, Holiday Automotive, and Ewald. Holiday was technically the cheapest, being $200 lower than the Homan Auto quote, but Homans offered several perks, including delivering the vehicle to Portage Upfitter and providing warranty work. This, along with Homans being a City taxpayer, made them the best value for the City to purchase from.
All bids had a lead time of 3-4 months, which Rasch said is typical for police car purchases.
Motion Kunz, second Kaczmarski, carried 6-0.
Also at the meeting, Chief Rasch gave a presentation on the “Flock” traffic camera surveillance system which has been put in place in southeast, east, and central Wisconsin. The service acts as a network of geolocation cameras that monitor vehicles on the roads for persons of interest, which can help solve and deter crime.
30 such cameras have been installed in Fond du Lac County and 35 in Dodge County, some of which have already been used to solve several crimes in the Waupun area since they have been up. This included locating a stolen vehicle from Waupun, identifying the perpetrator of a series of disorderly conduct complaints in town, proving the alibi of a potential suspect in a local burglary, and tracking and detaining a subject on the terrorist watchlist who was attempting to travel to the Presidential campaign event in Juneau, where President Donald Trump was speaking on October 6, 2024.
Flock was first founded in 2018, and the first cameras were installed in Wisconsin in 2020.
In his monthly department report, Rasch also said that the Waupun Police Department is looking into a cloud-based police body camera system.
