Troubled firemen

According to the TV newscast, the Lake St. Louis fire department needs a tax increase.  The reporter informed us that the department’s newest fire truck is 18 years old and constantly needs repair.  For example, she said, the speedometer is broken, so the firemen have to write down their mileage.  Question:  Why don’t they look at the odometer?

It gets worse.  If it’s the odometer that’s actually broken, how do the firemen know the distance they’ve traveled so they can write it down?  Do they really do the math to manually record the mileage?  If a fire truck travels for 15 minutes at 25 mph, . . . 

With reports like this, the main thought in the reporter’s head must be “If I only had a brain!”