SELMA – New emergency vehicles will be making their way to the city of Selma after the council approved requests from both the police and fire departments.
The Selma City Council considered and unanimously approved two large purchases that will help update the city’s emergency vehicle fleets at its meeting on Dec. 2. Up first was a request for the council to sign off on the purchase of a new ambulance.
“The way we deploy our ambulances today, we base a replacement plan of eight ambulances every six years, and so we’re going to purchase one ambulance a year, and then every third year we’ll have to purchase two, and so that’s based off of the utilization of those resources,” Fire Chief Jordan Webster said.
Webster said the ambulance the department would purchase would be the same model of ambulance the council approved a purchase of in September — a Medix Specialty Vehicles Type 3 Ford E-350.
While the ambulance purchased in September is set to arrive in April 2026, Webster said this ambulance would be scheduled to come in the spring of 2027. The expense of just under $272,000 would be included in the city’s fiscal year 2026-27 budget, and the city will not actually pay for it until it gets delivered.
Webster explained that there is an increasingly long lead time for new emergency vehicles, which is why he was bringing the request to the council so early. The Selma Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services division currently utilizes six ambulances, and the two most recent purchases will add a seventh and eighth ambulance into the rotation.
Three fully-staffed Advanced Life Support ambulances operate around the clock, and Selma will soon begin staffing a fourth ambulance part-time to meet increasing service demands. Each ambulance puts on about 50,000 miles per year and has an expected service life of 250,000 to 300,000 miles.
The council asked questions about the model and the department’s ambulance usage before approving the request without issue.
Council members next considered purchases of other emergency vehicles, this time for the Selma Police Department.
Police Chief Rudy Alcaraz asked that the council approve the procurement of five new patrol vehicles through the Enterprise Fleet agreement that was contentiously approved by the council in March 2024. Over the last year, the council has told city staff that they must get specific approval to purchase new vehicles through the agreement and they must work to purchase those vehicles through local car dealerships.
The fleet agreement is beneficial to the city because it allows Selma to lease new vehicles and then sell them off once they have reached the end of their useful service life.
According to a staff report, the cost of a single patrol vehicle, outfitted with the special equipment used by the police department, is $85,000. Through the fleet agreement, Selma was able to procure five patrol vehicles in fiscal year 2024-25 with an annual lease payment of $80,000 total.
As the department’s patrol fleet continues to age, Alcaraz said they would like to purchase an additional five new vehicles for this fiscal year. An additional $80,000 budget allocation was already included in the 2025-26 fiscal year budget; however, due to inflation and other rising costs, Alcaraz said he was also asking for a budget amendment to increase the allocation by $10,000, for a total of $90,000.
Alcaraz said Enterprise agreed to partner with the Selma Dodge dealership to procure the vehicles, meaning the city would still get sales tax revenue from the purchase.
“I think that’s the best of both worlds,” Mayor Scott Robertson said. “You get the local tax effect, you get the sales tax dollars for our city — most of which is attributable to our car dealerships here, including Selma Dodge — so that’s really good. And you also get the financial benefits of leasing through pros like Enterprise. So I think that’s just a great collaboration there.”
