Medina ladder truck sold for $2.1 million to community in Illinois

Photo from shopgarage.com: Medina’s ladder truck is shown on an online site that sells fire trucks, emergency vehicles and equipment. The site lists the truck as being sold. It was listed on the site on May 19.

MEDINA – The Village of Medina has sold its ladder truck for $2.1 million to the Village of Wilmette, an Illinois community of about 28,000 people near Chicago. Wilmette has a median household income of $190,662.

Medina has a population of 5,855, according to the 2025 population estimates from the Census Bureau. Medina’s median household income is $59,231, just a fraction’s of Wilmette’s.

“They are a wealthy community,” said Medina Mayor Debbie Padoleski. “It’s a beautiful truck. I would have loved to keep it, but it’s more truck than we need and it’s more truck than we can afford.”

Wilmette officials on Monday were in Medina and hand-delivered a check for $2.1 million. They also gave the truck a final inspection. The ladder truck is expected to leave Medina next week and be transported to Wilmette. The ladder truck is currently being kept in the former compost facility on North Gravel Road near Boxwood Cemetery.

Padoleski is happy the ladder truck is sold and at a nice profit for the village.

“It’s been tough to move forward,” she said about the ladder truck, an issue that the village officials have been wrestling with for several years now.

The village budget for 2026-27 included a $300,000 profit with the sale of the ladder truck.

The sale is about $400,000 more than Medina’s contract with Pierce Manufacturing back in March 2023 when the Medina Village Board voted to pay $1,698,995 for the ladder truck. But with the first interest payment, Medina’s cost is closer to $1.8 million.

The sale at $2.1 million also includes a $100,000 fee to the broker. Padoleski said the village won’t have to make the year one principal payment at $130,000.

The new truck was too big for the existing fire hall and the board at that time expected an addition would be built on the existing fire hall. The truck is about 13 feet high where the fire station bays only have a clearance of 10 feet, 6 inches. But the initial construction estimates put an addition and overhaul of the current station at about $6 million. Just doing a one-bay addition would be about $1.3 million.

A new majority on the Village Board deemed those costs too much for the village taxpayers. They declared the ladder truck as surplus on Feb. 9, about two months after Pierce delivered it. The truck was never put into service.

The fire truck was listed for sale at $2.4 million on May 19 on an online site that sells fire trucks and other emergency vehicles and equipment. The website, shopgarage.com, touted the 2025 quint fire truck with a 100-foot ladder. The truck was promoted as “brand new, never used” with only 1,095 miles.

Padoleski said there was a strong interest in the ladder truck from a community in Texas, from a private business and from nearby Brockport.

Wilmette made the best offer, and followed up with a check.

Padoleski commended Deputy Mayor Scott Bieliski for working with the broker and potential buyers to get a good price for Medina.

The mayor said the Village Board will shift to looking at the future of the fire department and its ambulance service. Bieliski is on the hunt for a smaller used ladder truck that would fit in the existing fire hall.

She said the village needs more buy-in from neighboring towns that receive the ambulance service. Medina is seeking an increase from $35,000 to $135,000 from the towns of Shelby, Ridgeway and Yates. But even at that level, the village taxpayers are paying more than $1 million a year towards its paid fire department.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous to expect the Village of Medina to pay for a service that goes outside the Village of Medina,” she said.

An Orleans County Shared Services Committee is looking at how to best fund and provide EMS and the fire service throughout the county. Padoleski wants to see a plan from that committee that shares the burden around the county.

“With EMS, it needs to be everybody’s problem,” she said. “It can’t just be Medina’s problem.”