The Lake St. Louis Fire Protection District owns three pieces of land and two buildings. We need to end up with one building siting on one piece of land. Before I offer my thoughts on that, let me summarize where we have arrived at up to this point.
· We need a public fire district.
· We do not want to merge; we want to properly run this district.
· We only need one fire house.
Here is a map of our fire district.
Location A is our existing South Ellerman Fire House. Location B is our Fire House on Lake St. Louis Blvd across from Boulevard Park. Location C is a piece of property the district owns at the top of the lake. Location D is where the Wentzville Fire District has located a new Fire House.
It is my understanding that because Lake St. Louis started as a volunteer fire district we built 2 fire houses, one on each side of the lake, so firefighters could quickly get to the station and trucks could get out the door. We are currently operating out of the South Ellerman location, with a full crew 24/7. But that is not the optimum location to cover the entire district.
Because of the unique nature of this district, including the obvious fact of a long thin lake bisecting it, the best place to put a fire house for response times would be location C, at the top of the lake. This is where the ambulance district has a station. This is almost certainly why the fire district bought property there. This is the location suggested by the programs that calculate response times.
We also have to consider the location of fire houses in the districts around us. The existence of a fire house at location D also suggests that location C would be optimal for covering the district properly. In addition it points out one glaringly obvious reality: We do not need the fire house currently at location B on Lake St. Louis Blvd.
It seems obvious we are going to sell the fire house and land on Lake St. Louis Blvd. I do not know how much such a sale will bring; perhaps some of you realtor friends have a better idea about that. But it will bring us some revenue, which we can work into the equation going forward.
If we do not receive any tax increase or bond approval and we have to have the worst case we will sell the LSL Blvd. location and consolidate into the existing house on S. Ellerman. We might be able to buy a truck but that would be it and the core budget problem would remain unaddressed.
The better long term plan would be to build on the property at the top of the lake near the ambulance district and then sell the Ellerman location and be set for the long term with one station properly located on one piece of land. This is the best long term solution.
Questions remain, of course. Does the piece of land we own meet our needs? Can we cooperate somehow with the ambulance district? What are the deficiencies we would have to overcome if we had to merge everything into the S. Ellerman location? And of course I still need to address trucks and equipment and personnel and a number of other things. Stay tuned.
For now let me be clear that: It seems to me we should put one fire station on one piece of land at the top of the lake near the ambulance station.
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