December 19, 2025

By Mary Beth Gahan

FLOWER MOUND, Texas — Fire Chief Paul Henley said Thursday that it's "frustrating" that the cost and wait time for a fire engine to be built has skyrocketed, but he presented to town council a plan that may save money on apparatus.

Henley was at a town council work session as the last department to take part in a three-month "Value of Municipal Services" series that outlined the performance, costs, and needs of each corner of the town government. The purpose was to better prepare members of town council and town staff for the next state legislative session.

The fire truck manufacturing industry has been consolidated in recent years, causing the cost of engines to increase and wait times for delivery to stretch from months to years.

"Used to, you could go to the showroom floor of a fire engine show and there were 80 different engines from 80 different manufacturers that you could choose from," Henley said. "Now, you've got three, maybe four."

It's a nationwide problem, but the effects are felt already in Flower Mound.

It takes extra time to get parts for repairs, and when they're in, those fixes come at a large cost. The last two times the department performed preventative maintenance on an engine, it spent $30,000 each time.

"We're running them too much," Henley said of the “heavies.”

When engines are replaced at the end of their 10 to 15 year lifetime, the price tag is more than $1 million and takes about three years from design to delivery, according to town documents.

The department ordered one in November 2024 for $1.6 million. The fleet has a 2015 engine that will need to be replaced in about three years and three 2017 models to be replaced in 2029 or 2030, according to the chief.

"We've got to make a change because the taxpayer cannot keep funding these expensive fire apparatus and paying the rates we're paying. There's gotta be another solution, and I'm open for that discussion," Henley said.

Henley said the department could turn to using a squad unit to follow an ambulance for calls that don't require an engine. A squad unit is two people in a suburban or pickup trucks with the tools needed for the eight main medical calls or lift assists. Henley said that 54 percent of calls the Flower Mound Fire Department receives do not need an engine or aerial truck. Whether they send one is at the discretion of the captain.

Henley said it would be a "best-case scenario" to have a squad unit in every district, but presented a plan for one squad unit for the west side of Flower Mound and another for the east side. One option to make it work would be to take one of the four people off a ladder truck and into the squad vehicle, which could be a repurposed brush truck. The engine would still be available to respond to fires.

Sam Thrash, president of the Flower Mound Professional Firefighters Association, declined to comment on the chief's presentation.

Deputy mayor pro tem Adam Schiestel, who has had conversations already with city officials about the delay of fire trucks, said he was glad to hear Chief Henley address those concerns in his presentation. Schiestel said he'd be willing to put some funding toward what the department needs to rework equipment in order to meet the needs more efficiently.

"I would like us to move forward, and quickly," Schiestel said.

Henley said he is working with town staff to figure out how to make the changes work with the budget. He envisions a pilot program before coming back to the council with data about how much money they saved.