FAITH — The Faith Fire Department is looking into creating an email server now that it has hired part-time firefighters. The town’s aldermen said during the board meeting on Tuesday that they wanted to help out financially, despite Fire Chief Scott Gardner saying the department would be willing to finance it all itself.

Gardner brought the idea before the board because the fire department had run into an issue when attempting to claim faithfdnc.gov, the town does not have the domain faithnc.gov. The fire department asked the board for permission to pay for both of the domains. When or if the town wanted to claim faithnc.gov, the fire department planned to relinquish it for free.

The fire department started looking into creating a server in order to have a central location for all of the paid firefighters, instead of having their emails spread out across multiple platforms. He also said that any forms that were needed could be put on there along with schedules.

Gardner said that Assistant Chief Chase Kneip has been handling the effort, noting that he was not sure exactly what it would cost but he knew that it would be over $8,000 in total. He also said that the department could absorb the costs through their fundraising money.

“I kind of hate seeing our fire department spend $7,000. They’re still a part of this town, whether we meet them halfway or we do something else,” said Mayor Pro Tem Dale Peeler.

Other members of the board agreed with Peeler. Alderman Jayne Lingle noted that the town had already looked into creating a website. Peeler said that since the fire department is governed by the town and the domain would benefit the town, he believed that helping with the cost made sense.

Town Clerk Karen Fink said that in order to assist with the costs, since the funding was not in this year’s budget, the fire department could pay all of the costs now and the town would reimburse them in the next budget.

The board asked Gardner if he could bring back concrete estimates of the total cost as well as information about the time frame they are looking at and potential companies they could hire to the next meeting. During that meeting they planned to decide how they could help.