READING., Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council on Monday presented a proclamation to long-time Fire Chief James G. Stoudt, Jr. on the occasion of his retirement.<\/p>\n
Council President Donna Reed said that Stoudt began his career with the Reading City Fire Department in the winter of 1993.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat journey began as a volunteer firefighter in the city five years prior,\u201d she read. \u201cAs fire chief, Chief Stoudt genuinely felt most proud of working alongside such a fantastic group of dedicated firefighters, paramedics and all those who supported the department over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilman\u00a0Rafael Nunez said Stoudt is the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen you all the time doing a great job in the City of Reading,\u201d Nunez said. \u201cWe will miss you, but at the same time we\u2019re happy because you will enjoy your family. You did a very special job for this community.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of the other council members expressed similar sentiments and extended their thanks for the work Stoudt did.<\/p>\n
Stoudt said he never really had the ambition to be a chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to be a firefighter, and I always felt myself to be a firefighter who just happened to become the fire chief,\u201d Stoudt said. \u201cI appreciate everything, and I have put my application in already and dated it for today after my retirement for a vacancy on the Civil Service Board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, we also spent time with Stoudt at the Firefighters Museum on South Fifth Street, just steps away from where he grew up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born and raised two doors away here on Fifth Street\u2026 just being a firehouse kid, always over here having lunch with my father and hanging out with the members,\u201d Stoudt said.<\/p>\n
Stoudt s<\/p>\n
Along with honoring the chief\u2019s retirement, the council also approved resolutions to:<\/p>\n
Reappoint: Sandy Graffius to the audit committee, David McCoy to the recreation commission, and Scott Graham to the fire\/building code board of appeals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Award a traffic signal preventative maintenance contract to Telco Group, Inc, Reading, for an amount not to exceed $300,000 from the public works engineering budget for a three-year period.<\/p>\n
Purchase a 20225 Ford E350 chassis ambulance for $277,203 from Glick Fire Equipment Co., Bird In Hand. The purchase is to replace an ambulance for patient transport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING., Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council on Monday presented a proclamation to long-time Fire Chief James G. Stoudt,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[52670,52668,2716,52666,1094,128,52669,130,129,52667],"class_list":["post-110003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-chief-james-stoudt","tag-civil-service-board","tag-donna-reed","tag-glick-fire-equipment-co","tag-rafael-nunez","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-fire-department","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-telco-group-inc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}