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Show City-County discuss fire hydrants It costs $1000 to install a six inch fire hydrant, material and labor included. At the regular monthly meeting of the Uintah County Commission and Vernal City Council, fire hydrant installation was discussed in terms of areas of the county where they do not now exist. The issue was raised because the city is presently installing hydrants in areas bordering city limits and in unincorporated unincor-porated areas in the county. Vernal City Ci-ty Manager Ken Bassett asked the county coun-ty commission to consider helping with the expense, since residents of unincorporated unincor-porated areas in the county will benefit as much as city residents in these border areas. The county commission said they have never placed fire hydrants, and did not have the budget to do so. They said if they placed them, or helped with the cost of some areas they may be expected to place them everywhere in the county, and that is just impossible. Commis sioner Neal Domgaard said the county has backup tankers to supply water to the firetrucks. Bassett suggested the county commission commis-sion should consider some method of providing pro-viding hydrants, because many times the tank capacities of the firetrucks is inadequate. inade-quate. Fire hydrants are required by developers of subdivisions, and since this expense is passed on the people who buy the building lots or houses, City Coun-cilmen Coun-cilmen Karl Migliori suggested a similar thing could be done with existing home owners. He said that since the time to put in hydrants is when the water lines are put in, it might be wise to approach the ' home owners in the county about footing the $1000 bill among themselves. Commission Domgaard questioned whether this could be imposed on residents, although residents could certainly cer-tainly take it upon themselves to approach ap-proach the Commission to have this done. No action was taken on Bassett's request re-quest for the county to participate in the expense of installing hydrants. It was suggested a legal opinion be obtained as to whether the county could charge residents for hydrants installation without their consent. In another fire protection issue, the question of Naples City participating in county fire protection was raised. Migliori said the Uintah County-Vernal City fire department responded to a fire in Naples on Tuesday, fought the fire for an hour and a half and the Naples fire department never showed up. Commissioner Domgaard said there was a question as to whether or not the Naples Fire Department is in operation, and yet, Naples has not been paying the bills sent to them for fire protection, even though the city-county department continues con-tinues to respond. |