The Selectboard Monday night asked Fire Chief Mike Bender to get more bids for a boat to be used for water rescues.
Bender has proposed using $113,114 from a reserve account to buy a 21-foot rigid, inflatable boat with an outboard motor from Ribcraft USA. The boat would replace a 12-foot boat acquired in 2001 by what was then the Somesville Fire Company, and the Mount Desert Fire Department inherited it.
“The existing boat restricts our rescue abilities to one victim retrieval at a time, with no room for patient care once onboard,” Bender said in a memo to Town Manager Durlin Lunt. “It also does not handle rough weather conditions well, sometimes placing our first responders in hazardous conditions.”
He said Ribcraft USA has experience in building rescue boats for public safety agencies.