Rural Fire District looks at station sale
Berl Tiskus
Old Glory snaps over the Fairgrounds Fire Station on Regatta Road in Polson.
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POLSON — The Rural Fire Board held its monthly meeting on Dec. 8 at the Fairgrounds Fire Station, and one item on the agenda drew quite a crowd. That item was discussion about the possible sale of the Fairgrounds Station to Lake County Search and Rescue.
LCSAR members attended and had an impromptu look around the building. LCSAR is under the umbrella of the Lake County Sheriff’s office, so Lake County Sheriff Jay Doyle was at the meeting, as was Lake County Commissioner Bill Barron.
LCSAR has been searching for land to construct a new building for two years, according to Frankie Brown, LCSAR president.
“We have more equipment at members’ houses than we can get into our building,” Brown said in a phone interview after the meeting. “We’re growing as an organization with equipment and members.”
LCSAR has 25 to 30 members plus some inactive and specialty members.
Brown said LCSAR heard through the grapevine that the Rural Fire Department might be selling the building. With Lake County entities housed on both wings of the building, LCSAR thought it would be an advantage to keep the building all Lake County departments.
“We didn’t go looking for this (potential sale),” said Jack Clapp, RFD chair.
When the Fairgrounds Fire Station was constructed, there was active disagreement from the firefighters who didn’t like the location.
They “begged for a study,” Clapp said.
In the fall of 2013 that study was done, and an agency evaluation by Emergency Services Consulting Multinational was completed. Now the Rural Fire District board is looking at locating a station on Jette. They will receive about $90,000 per year from the tax levy passed in 2013.
One reason they are considering the sale and construction of a new station is that the Polson Fire Station, Station 1, and the Fairgrounds Fire Station, Station 4, are less than a mile apart and splitting the firefighter response makes no sense.
But Clapp said the “overriding reason” is fire insurance cost. Most rural insurance rates are based on being within five miles of a fire station.
That classifies a homeowner as a class 9. More than five miles is a class 10, which can mean $500 to $600 per year for a $250,000 home, according to Clapp.
The ESCI study said “that (though) insurance ratings should be taken into consideration, we caution against their being viewed as a primary factor.”
Clapp contends that a fire station on Jette Hill would include many more homes within the five-mile circle.
Lee Manicke, local resident, noted that the study also said the new fire station could be built one to two years in the future, with the possibility of an additional fire station south of Polson within five to 10 years.
Some RFD residents are not in favor of selling the Fairgrounds station because it is only four years old; that the building proposed in Jette is larger than the Fairgrounds Station; and the building should remain a fire station.
As of now, there is no legally binding agreement on the proposed sale of the Fairgrounds Station.
To view the Emergency Services Consulting Multinational report online, go to www.polsonfire.org and click on Rural Fire Board minutes, and when that page comes up, click on Agency Evaluation Report in the upper right corner.
