The Magic Bus, courtesy of Oregon City taxpayers

Oregon City taxpayers will be repaying 70 kilobucks worth of bonds for the next two decades, for a bus. But not just any bus.

"The new incident command unit, co-owned by Clackamas County Fire District 1 and Oregon City police, will serve as a command post for local agencies responding to floods, multi-alarm fires or other large-scale emergencies. The unit, a renovated Blue Bird bus, is equipped to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats, said (Clackamas County Fire District No. 1) Battalion Chief John Ingrao, who oversees operations for the fire district. More likely, the incident command unit will be used during ice storms, railroad derailments, spills, political events and hostage situations."

"The fire district and police department will split operating costs during the command unit's first year in service, (Oregon City) Police Chief Gordon Huiras said. After that, he estimated Oregon City will pay about 30 percent of operating costs."

[Source: Brad Schmidt's Oregonian article of Nov. 16th.]

Homeland Security paid 125 kilobucks of the 200 total needed for the acquisition of the multi-modal rolling command post. Having seen a similar mobile CP which Intel assembled for their emergency operations, and having trained on other, similar systems, getting one for only 70 kilobucks of local funds is a pretty good deal.