NATCHEZ — After a conversation in which tempers sometimes burned hot, the Adams County Board of Supervisors voted Monday to seek financing to purchase a new fire truck for the City of Natchez.

The vote came after Natchez Mayor Butch Brown spoke before the board, asking when the county government would purchase the truck. Brown said he was concerned the county would not order equipment he believed was necessary to fight potential industrial fires.

Brown said the truck needs to have the capability to carry a specific type of foam to fight a petroleum-based fire.

“With these companies that have a lot of petroleum based products down in the port, we are very concerned our equipment we own today is not adequate to control that kind of fire,” Brown said.

“We are terribly concerned about (the potential) loss of life where we are basically unprotected, especially down at the port. There are also 3,500 (people) in the (Adams County Correctional Center) and basically the only thing out there in terms of fire protection is a sprinkler system.”

The truck purchase is included in the inter local fire protection agreement between the city and county, and while the county has not yet fallen below the requirements that would require it to purchase the truck, the supervisors have agreed to the purchase anyway.

“The city should not be put in a contractual situation where we have to fight fires in the county we cannot fight,” Brown said.

Tempers flared at Monday’s meeting when the mayor said he’d “heard through the grapevine” the supervisors were not planning to purchase the equipment the city had requested with the fire truck.

Supervisor Mike Lazarus said the board had never discussed the specifications of the truck at all, and County Administrator Joe Murray said the board hasn’t met since receiving a finalized set of specifications from the fire chief in mid-February.

“The board has done nothing but pass the fire truck,” board attorney Scott Slover said. “We are trying to make sure we have one that meets the needs we have.”

After the meeting, Slover said the board had already planned to bring the topic up and had communicated that to Brown, but had wanted to meet with the safety committee formed by industries in the Natchez-Adams County Port first.

“This was the first meeting after the safety meeting,” he said.

During the meeting, Supervisor David Carter expressed some frustration at the process, saying specifications kept getting added along the way.

“One of the things Chief (Oliver Stewart) said that was a white flag to us was y’all don’t have much foam because it is more expensive to use,” Carter said. “It’s like us buying an asphalt mixer with no asphalt.”

Brown said the foam in question was not for fighting petroleum-based fires. The new set of specifications handed over from the city increased the total cost of the truck from $465,000 to $524,980, Murray said.

The base price for the truck was $457,553. The equipment that pushed the cost upward includes:

4A 12-gallon-per minute foam system at $15,744.

4A 140 cubic feet per minute compressed air flow system at $26,483

4Four additional self-contained breathing apparatuses at $25,200.

Murray said Natchez Fire Chief Oliver Stewart selected the truck from the state contract list.

“The sole responsibility of the county is to pay for the truck,” he said. “If you are a carpenter, who am I to tell you which tool to use?”

Following the conversation, the supervisors voted to authorize Murray to seek bids for financing for a lease-purchase agreement for the truck.

Brown said once the truck is ordered it will take eight months to build and deliver.

In other news, the board voted to extend a countywide burn ban until April 1 at the request of Fire Coordinator Darryl Smith. Smith said despite recent winter weather that has significantly dampened the area, conditions have still been ripe enough to generate four grass fires in the last week.