City Council Thinks Ahead To New Fire Station Facility

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The city of Mesquite has begun planning openly about a new fire station in the northern part of the city to better service the recent growth to Sun City.

In a meeting held Tuesday, Nov. 9, Mesquite Fire & Rescue Department Chief Jayson Andrus made a presentation before City Council on the emergency response needs being projected by city staffers and the plans being made to eventually fulfill those needs.

“We wanted to just begin a dialogue, as the city continues to grow, regarding the next placement of Fire Station #4,” Andrus said. “We want to make sure that we take our time and get it right based off of the appropriate data.”

Andrus showed maps and charts which detailed response times from the two current stations. The target was to maintain around a five minute response time throughout the city, Andrus said.

But recent growth has been occurring on the far northern end of the city, Andrus pointed out.
“Ninety-three percent of all residential building permits over the last four years have been north of I-15,” Andrus said. “That is a really imporant data point. There are approximately 1,700 single family units, including apartments, that are in progress or plan review.”

Andrus gave a brief update of the current fire department facilities.
Station #1, located downtown just behind Mesquite City Hall, is a major hub for emergency response throughout the city. Plans are in place to replace this aging building with a new facility located nearby in the downtown area.

Station #2 is in the Mesquite Airport and is used by Mercy Air medical services. So it is not really in the mix for local emergency response, Andrus said.

Station #3, located on the west end of town, was built at a time when residential growth was expected to explode in that area.

“I think my predecessors back in 2005 believed that the growth was going to go west towards that station,” Andrus said. “And I think we will get there. But our numbers have told us that we are not seeing a lot of incidents within that response area.”

Instead, the call volumes have been moving north, along with the growth, Andrus said.
“We still have a significant number of calls south of I-15, whether we are dealing with casinos and other businesses etc,” Andrus said. “But we are also seeing a significant pull to the north where the call volumes have been singificnatly on the rise, even over the past 12 months.”

Public Works Director Travis Anderson addressed the council to talk about some preliminary work being done to select a possible site for a new fire station in the northern part of town.

Anderson said that a good location for such a facility would be on the west side of the intersection of Canyon Crest and Horizon Blvd. The city is currently doing roadway improvements in that area that will connect Horizon to Falcon Ridge Blvd to the north.

“From that intersection, it provides great access for the fire department to get to any of those Sun City areas,” Anderson said. “It would allow a lot of flexibility on a number of arterial roads to get to their calls a lot faster than going through subdivisions.”

Anderson said that he had contacted Pulte Homes, the developer of Sun City and the owner of the parcel in question, to discuss the possibility of the City acquiring that parcel for the fire station. Those discussions are ongoing.

Andrus added that, with the current staffing model, there is enough personnel to operate all three of these stations.

Andrus acknowledged that this was very early in the planning process. But he asked for any feedback, comments or questions from the council in this matter.

Councilman Wes Boger said that this was a good time to discuss this item because the city has funds available, either through local Redevelopment Agency funds or through federal American Rescue funding.

“So this is actually an opportunity for us as a city to be more proactive than reactive,” Boger added. “All of the building is going on up there. Sun City doesn’t have a great response time right now as it is. So I appreciate you getting staff together and getting this discussion going.”

City councilwoman Karen Dutkowski asked the chief what percentage of all calls are medical calls vs. fire calls. Andrus responded that 87 percent of the calls are medical. With the rapid growth of Sun City, that statistic illustrated that rapid response in that area is vital, Dutkowski said.
“We do need to be prepared,” she said. “We need to be able to get to the emergencies in the amount of time that is necessary.”

Mesquite mayor Al Litman emphasized that this was only a preliminary discussion. “But I believe we do have funding available, it’s just a matter of allocating that funding properly, at least for the building,” he said.

“I think at this point, we would probably want staff to further investigate, especially as to cost factors and so forth, and the conversations we would need to have with Pulte for the land and whatever we would have to do at this point,” Litman said.

In a separate agenda item, the City Council approved a revised employment agreement with Andy Barton as City Manager. Barton has been serving as Interim City Manager since May. The only change in the new agreement was to remove the term “Interim” from his title, according to the contract.

The agreement was approved with a unanimous vote of the Council.