Along with the agreement of all present (the flying monkeys) to remove the ability of councilpersons to request information from council meeting audience members, and the miserable solution to the mounted patrol mounts, the firetrucks came back to haunt.
Last month, with only a bid of $600 for the 1981 American LaFrance pumper (probably $150,000 purchase price, with over $120,000 in improvements), the council looked to investigate selling the vehicle on eBay. A similar truck was selling at the time (not the final price) for over $6000. At Monday's work session, the finance officer came to the meeting to tell them, after a month of opportunity, that she didn't know how much it would cost to sell the vehicle, or how many city employee man-hours would be necessary to carry out the sale. She delivered this information in kind of a whiny and nervous voice, which indicated to me that she hadn't made any effort at all to do the investigation, which would have taken her about 20 minutes on the eBay site, or, worse yet, was instructed by someone either not to even try or to supress her findings if she did. Having had rather extensive experience myself with selling on eBay (I've actually made mortgage payments with profits from selling mostly junk on eBay,) I can, with assurance, relate that the listing cost for the truck would be under $100, that eBay would take as a selling fee 6% or so of the final selling price, and that a totally unexperienced seller could list an item, with pictures and description, in under two hours. An experienced user could do it in 20 minutes. I attempted to relate this information to the council, but you know how it is: I was gaveled down, and after the meeting, dissed by Dunn. The more probable truth behind the matter is that the council (minus Mrs. Campbell) wants to give the truck away to the Fairmount Volunteer FD! Gary Comegys led the discussion on this one, and remarked (like it came to them as a pleasant surprise) that it would build a good relationship with Fairmount via a goodwill effort. What *%##^@# goodwill do we have to build with Fairmount, I have to *^#@&&*# ask??! Here we are with a major budget deficit looking us square in the eye, the mayor and council giving more away every time they meet, and we choose to dispose of a valuable piece of property for what will amount only to boosting Gary Comegys' reputation within the Maryland fire community? Oh, yeah, you can bet that his plate at the muskrat and 'coon dinner down there will be forever gratis. And the presentation of the piece will undoubtedly be by Gary, representing the City among a large gathering of redneck voters, followed by a big spread in the Times, with pictures, of course, and these will be framed for the wall of the Fairmount VFD. The PR will follow Gary, but it won't follow the City. Frankly, if Fairmount wants the engine, let them bid for it. $6000 and more can be had quite handily through both fundraising and State and even Federal grants held and requested by Fairmount. Gary can show them how, he being the all-things-fire-station knowledgeable fellow that he is.
As for the second truck, the SFD has requested to keep it for parts, as they have a very similar, if not identical engine in service. This will no doubt grace a bay in the new $12M and climbing firehouse on the bog until it is a skeleton and only worth pennies per hundredweight. Actually, I like this idea of recycling this engine, as the cost of body and other parts for these is astronomical. I wish that they'd thought about this before they first offered it for sale.
As an update, as of late October, straight from the horse's mouth, the SFD has decided not to keep the second engine, stating that it would be more of a bother to keep it than not.
Yesterday Jennifer and I took a stroll around our property in Willards and came upon a brand new deer stand directly on our property, completely illegal. 
