Isle of Wight County will put $2 million in upfront payments it’s received from the Sycamore Cross solar farm approved last year toward buying a new fire engine and two ambulances.

County supervisors voted unanimously on April 17 to pass a budget amendment allocating $1 million toward the purchase of an engine for the Windsor Volunteer Fire Department and $500,000 apiece for ambulances for the Windsor and Isle of Wight volunteer rescue squads.

In September, the supervisors approved Isle of Wight’s share of Arlington-based AES Clean Energy’s proposed Sycamore Cross solar farm, which was originally to span more than 2,000 acres across the Isle of Wight-Surry county border. Surry County rejected its 125-acre share in February, but a provision of AES’s siting agreement with Isle of Wight had specified the county would receive roughly $3.5 million in upfront payments prior to the start of commercial operations regardless of how Surry voted.

County Administrator Randy Keaton said Isle of Wight has already received $2 million of that total. The remaining $1.5 million is allocated in the county’s proposed 2025-26 capital improvements plan for other one-time expenses.

“Since we already have the money we thought it would be good to go ahead and do this now and do a budget amendment and let them go ahead and order the equipment sooner so they can get their production process a little bit quicker,” Keaton said.

Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Chief Garry Windley said manufacturers of emergency vehicles have been backlogged with orders since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to 2020, “you could get fire trucks in like 120 days or so, six months at the most,” Windley said. “… Now, Windsor is talking to four different vendors for their fire truck already, and one vendor has a 52-month lead time to get a fire truck. The shortest timeframe that they have found with the four vendors they are talking to is 28 months.”

The turnaround time from order to delivery for new ambulances, Windley said, is around three years.

“We ordered two ambulances in November of 2023 and they are scheduled to be delivered to the county … in June of 2026,” Windley said.

The post-pandemic rise in the cost of steel, coupled with the on-and-off tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, has also increased the cost per vehicle.

“Virginia Beach, for example had ordered four new engines when we were getting our quotes and they were over $1.1 million,” Windley said. “In Windsor talking to the manufacturers with the tariffs and steel goods … they’ve already told them as of May 1 whatever they’re looking at now, count on a 20% increase.”

Locking in a purchase agreement before the July 1 start of the new fiscal year may shave a few months off the delivery time, and may or may not save on the cost.

Windley said a recently purchased tanker truck for the Carrollton Volunteer Fire Department was budgeted at $400,000 but “when they got the specs for that it came in at $625,000, and the board approved an additional $225,000 to get that truck.” In another instance, a brush truck for the Smithfield Volunteer Fire Department was budgeted at $175,000 but came in at $225,000 and the board amended its budget by $50,000, Windley said.