10.b1 Staff Report Turnout Gear 2025
Staff Report
Date of Meeting: September, 16th 2025
To: City Council
From: Mike Hinz, Fire Chief
Re: Annual Turnout Gear Replacement
Background:
Firefighting turnout gear is what the fire fighters wear as PPE (Personnel Protective Equipment), this
consists of a helmet, particulate hood, turnout coat, turnout pants, boots and gloves. Firefighting turnout gear
has a useful life of 10 years per NFPA standard 1971, so back in 2015 the department came up with a plan to
bring our gear into compliance with this standard. To achieve this it was decided that we would purchase 3 set
of gear (boots, bunker pants & bunker coat) every year at a cost of $3,000 per set. This would have meant that
after 10 years we would start over to keep all gear within the 10 year life. During COVID we were not able to
purchase these items and are requesting to increase to 4 sets to try to improve on our replacement schedule. This
addition of the 4th set of gear puts us over what the city administrator is allowed to approve. Currently we are
out of date on 13 sets and 2 sets of gear that expire this year plus 3 sets when the new members complete their
probation for a total of 18 sets of gear that will be out of date at the end of the year. Prices have increased by
21% this year, so we will have to adjust our spending in other areas to compensate the increase over last year’s
projection of $12,000. 2024 price was $3,289 per set which is a 11% increase.
The current pricing is as follows
Boots = $334.00
Turnout Coat = $2,000.00
Turnout pants = $1,313.89
Total cost per set = $3,647.94
Issue:
Should the city council approve the purchase of a 4 sets of replacement turnout gear?
Proposal Details:
Purchase 4 sets of replacement turnout gear (boots, bunker pant & bunker coat) from Jefferson fire &
safety in the amount of $14,591.76.
Fiscal Impact:
We did budget $15,000 for uniforms and gear though we only have $13,287.64 remaining in that fund, we will
have to make adjustments to other line items to compensate for this expense.
Options:
(1) Approve purchase of 4 sets of turnout gear
(2) Approve a different number of sets of gear to purchase
(3) Deny the purchase of turnout gear
Recommendation:
Option (1).