Fire official went to Caribbean to donate truck
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
April 1, 2009
The deputy D.C. fire chief in charge of all department apparatus traveled to a Dominican Republic beach town in late January, and stayed for nearly a week at D.C. taxpayers’ expense, to announce the donation of a firetruck and ambulance.
Troubled history
» D.C. inspector general derided the District’s surplus property disposal methods in a September 2004 audit.
» Audit claimed Office of Contracting and Procurement was selling used firetrucks and ambulances for a tiny fraction of their value. In one case, a 1986 Ford E-1 Pumper, with a dealer asking price of $59,000, was auctioned for $75.
Deputy Fire Chief Ronald Gill Jr. was in the Dominican resort town Sosua from Jan. 29 through Feb. 4, spending $135 per day for a total cost of $810, according to documents provided to the D.C. Council’s Public Safety and Judiciary Committee. The travel information was submitted March 4, in response to questions from the council panel ahead of the fiscal 2008 oversight hearing.
The reason for his six-day trip to the north Dominican coast: “Fire truck donation.”
It is unclear whether the $135 was a per diem or included hotel charges. Gill has put $1,847 on his department-issued charge card so far in fiscal 2009, those same documents show.
Gill declined comment Tuesday. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin is slated to appear before the public safety committee today to discuss the department’s fiscal 2010 budget proposal.
“I’m looking at the whole thing,” Attorney General Peter Nickles said Tuesday. “I don’t want to be premature in my comments.”
Peaceoholics Inc., a nonprofit anti-youth violence organization, says it organized the gift. The donation was authorized through an emergency rule published in the D.C. Register on March 20 — nearly two months after Gill announced the donation.
“They’re on their way back,” Ron Moten, Peaceoholics co-founder, said Tuesday of the vehicles, which are valued at a combined $340,000. “They made it down to Miami. Once all the flak came, we decided to bring them back.”
The decade-old firetruck and ambulance are worthless and at auction the city would get nothing, Moten told the “NewsTalk” program on NewsChannel 8. But the D.C. inspector general wrote in a 2004 audit, “At the time of disposal, used fire and EMS apparatus are usually worth substantial sums of money.”
The Sosua-News on Feb. 11 reported that the “Americans will also send instructors to train paramedics and personnel from the fire department on how to use such modern equipment.” Sosua, Moten said, is an impoverished town.
