One local community has no fire department and no emergency medical services. So why do they have an ambulance and dozens of pieces of emergency equipment?

Pioneer Village paid a nominal amount to acquire things like generators and SCUBA gear. Mayor Gary Hatcher says his city needs equipment to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Hatcher says Bullitt County's Department of Disaster & Emergency Services is unreliable. But some tell us the city's desire to acquire has nothing to do with a disaster.

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Pioneer Village has no paramedics or EMTs, but it has an ambulance. It’s parked at City Hall. The city owns a military bus, but it has no standing army.

That's only the beginning of what the mayor and police chief have acquired through DRMO, a fancy acronym for federal government military surplus.

“I have seen with my own eyes at that PD, rooms just piled with stuff.” Two former Pioneer Village employees agreed to talk to us with one stipulation -- we hide their identity.

“They have multiple cameras, multiple laptops, multiple computers,” says one.

Roughly 2,700 people live in Pioneer Village. None we spoke with were aware of the city's extensive inventory of surplus goods. Records obtained by WHAS11 News show since last December, Pioneer Village has obtained nearly 200 pieces of equipment from DRMO.

“We are recycling taxpayer money.” Chief Dale Elliott and Mayor Gary Hatcher say the equipment will enable Pioneer Village to respond to major disasters, such as the 1996 tornado that ripped apart the city. Keep in mind the city has but five employees trained to respond to such emergencies.

“God forbid if we have an accident and we have an airplane go down or anything, we have to be prepared,” says Chief Elliott, who adds that by next spring, the bus will become the city's mobile communications center.

“The last four seats I plan on taking out,” he says.

The ambulance will serve as an evidence gathering truck for the police department. Larry Stewart heads up Bullitt County's Department of Emergency Services.

“They don't have anyone trained to be an evidence technician,” says Stewart, who wrote the book on the county's response to disasters. “I don't have an answer as to what they are thinking up there.”

Surplus goodies don't stop at the end of the bus. There are motorcycles, radar guns, cameras and a projector. The list grows longer all the time.

“It’s supposedly turned into every week, or every other week, that their chief goes to pick up stuff and is bragging about it.”

He says up until recently, most surplus was stored in a room in back of City Hall. Its since been moved.

“I have got nothing to hide up here,” says the mayor.

The former employees left Pioneer Village of their own accord. They agreed to talk because both are convinced by what they have seen and heard the city has no intention of using surplus equipment to respond to natural disasters.

So is this a shell game? It appears to be yes.

"As time flies by you are going to start seeing some of the stuff start disappearing or auctioned off," says one former employee.

"I have heard they are getting it to keep and then to sell," says the other.

Mayor Hatcher says in that there's absolutely no truth to those allegations: “I just do what I can for the people and sleep good at night.”

The rub is this: Pioneer Village acquired the ambulance and bus nearly a year ago. Under state and federal guidelines, a city can sell surplus equipment after a year so long as it was used for its intended purpose. Ken McNevin, a spokesperson for DRMO, admits his agency has too few people to check up on how cities are using the equipment.

Web story produced by Jay Ditzer.