City Council Fire Dept. Committee Discusses Plans for 1 or 2 More Fire Stations
November 4th, 2009 by Rebecca FriendThe city council met Tuesday night for several special committee meetings. The first meeting was for the Fire Department Committee. The council met to discuss locations for a new fire department. Fire Chief Steven Faulkner presented the committee with maps and drawings of possible locations for the new fire department, and what the mile and a half response time area would be for those locations.
Alderman Tim Chase stated that he believed that if the council was going to build a new fire department, they needed to renovate and maintain the central location, and build a fourth one in another location. Alderman Beverly Hudson stated that while that would be ideal, it would cost more money to do that.
The committee decided to meet again in December to discuss the future location of the fire department.
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The old fire station is not going to last much longer. Let’s get this resolved and start construction. We, the citizens of Monticello, want to see some results from all these months of waiting.
I can appreciate Alderman Chase’s vision in suggesting that a fourth fire station be built. However, a good first step toward that — or any plan developed by this committee — would be to fund staffing for the existing Fire Station 3 in the 2010 budget. This would show a commitment by the council to provide the level of fire & emergency services needed in Monticello.
Although the current Central Fire Station is historical, it is ill-equipped to house modern fire engines and offers extremely limited space for administrative functions. It has served Monticello well for most of the last century. It is now time to construct a new headquarters that can serve well into this century.