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What comes first? The truck or the building?

Fire commissioners are grappling with a chicken and egg problem: they can’t look at financing new apparatus until they have a place to put them, but should they spend the money now to build a new facility large enough for a new fire engine when they don’t know when or if they can afford it?

“Five or six things all fold into this,” said commissioner David Gellatly. “I want to make sure we don’t underbuild for the sake of a few dollars. If we have to wait and wait and see if bingo is going to make it, we’ll keep on waiting. We also need new apparatus. We can’t look at apparatus if we don’t have a facility to put them in. It would be embarrassing to build the building and then go to the voters for funding for the apparatus and have them say no.”

At the May 9 meeting of the fire board chief Bill Skinner said that the title to the Julius fire station on Gulf Road was now clearly in the district’s hands after the Blaine school district filed a quit-claim deed removing an old interest in the property. The fire district could now sell the property, appraised last summer at $170,000, and use funds to build a new facility on the Benson Road site.

Gellatly pointed to another conundrum. The district can’t sell the Gulf Road station until they declare it surplus, and the district will continue to need it until the new facility is built to house the equipment now in the old building. “I don’t think we can declare it surplus until it really is,” he said.

Fire chief Bill Skinner said the current plans for a 50 by 45 foot metal pole building with three bays is estimated to cost from $217,000 to $240,000. Skinner said he would also like to consider a stick frame building that was estimated at $208,000 with approximately the same amenities. “If we anticipate selling the old property somewhere near appraised value that will pay for most of this project and the rest would come from reserves,” he said.

Gellatly said he would feel comfortable declaring the old fire station surplus and selling it once the new facility was designed, permitted, and construction was moving forward on a timeline. “We’ve been very frugal and it looks like we have the money,” he said. This year the district is again transferring an operating budget surplus from the previous year into their reserve account. The reserve account currently has a balance of $300,000.

Skinner said he was also optimistic the district would not have to ask the voters to foot the bill for new equipment. “We have a grant request filed for apparatus and we’ll know at the end of the year,” he said.

If the district does need additional voter-approved funding Gellatly suggested they avoid a levy lift and go for a bond issue. “That way it’s not ad infinitum but a specific amount for a specific purpose.”

Commissioners agreed to authorize Skinner to move forward with designing a new stick frame facility that would go out for bid later this year.