City council approves new fire station in Sun City

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The Mesquite City Council approved a proposal to build another new fire station facility during a meeting held on Tuesday, June 14. The new station would be carefully located to provide better response times to the Sun City community and other neighborhoods and businesses north of the I-15. The approval was still tentative as funding for the approximately $4 million facility has not yet been determined.

Last week’s discussion began with a presentation by Mesquite Fire Chief Jayson Andrus.
Andrus acknowledged that it has only been a few months since the council approved plans for a new Fire Station #1 facility to be located on Mesquite Blvd. just south of the Mesquite library. He emphasized that a central downtown facility is needed because of call volume in the downtown area and along the nearby resort corridor. A new facility is needed there to replace the dilapidated current Station #1 facility located behind City Hall.

“It is time!” Andrus said of the current Station #1. “The building is old and it was never really meant to be a fire station. We have made it work for the past 30 years. But the time has come to build a new facility that was meant to be a fire station.”

The council approved the new Fire Station #1 in February with an estimated cost of around $7 million. The council decided at that time to tap into the city’s redevelopment agency (RDA) funds to build the new facility.

In last week’s meeting, Andrus went on to advocate for yet another new facility to be located at the corner of Canyon Crest and Horizon Blvd on the north end of town. The parcel had been signed over to the city by Del Webb Sun City for a future public use.

“That way our crews could catch Horizon Blvd and be in Sun City within a four minute timeframe,” Andrus said.

Response times were the driving force in determining the need for this new station, Andrus said. He explained that the downtown placement of Station #1 and the placement of the current Station #3 in the Mesquite industrial park to the west of the city, had caused extended response times to the northern portion of the city; especially to the growing Sun City area.

“There are more than 2,400 residential units currently in process now,” Andrus said. “And we see that the future of our residential growth is happening north of the I-15.”

Currently the emergency medical service response times to Sun City and the northeast part of town are averaging more than five minutes, Andrus said. The national standard, and the target for Mesquite, is in the four minute range, he added.

Andrus explained that when Station #3 was built, back in 2008, the general consensus was that the western part of the city would see the highest, and most immediate, growth rates. But that growth hasn’t yet materialized, he said.

“It is a wonderful training facility and we are appreciative of it,” Andrus said of Station #3. “But if you consider the response time from there to Sun City and what we are missing in Sun City as we speak, I would shut down Station #3 today and staff the new station strictly on the current call volume that is happening in Sun City that is already occurring. That doesn’t even account for the coming growth up there.”

Andrus said that the proposed new station would not require the purchase of any dditional apparatus or the hiring of any new personnel.

“Currently we have enough apparatus to staff three stations,” he said. “And right now we have nine personnel. Most likely we would put four (firefighters) in the new Station #1 because of our call volume downtown. And then we would either spread them out or put the remaining staff in the Sun City station.”

City Council members expressed support for the idea but were unsure about where the funding would come from for the project.

Andrus said that one possible funding option would be seeking American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funds in the form of federal and state grants. He said that the fire department has already submitted an application to the Nevada League of Cities for state ARPA funds. Enough funds could be available in that program to cover the entire project, he said. Though he was uncertain of when the awarding of the grants would be done.

Other funding options could include use of additional RDA funding or the issuing of new bonds by the city, Andrus said.

Councilman Brian Wursten asked if the item could be approved without having a specific revenue source nailed down.

Mesquite Mayor Litman said that this could be done. That way, engineering for the project could begin as the funding for the project is sought and finalized, he said.

“If we can move forward with this, which I think we should do tonight, then it would just be pending the source of funding,” Litman said. “Everything else is just waiting.”

Wursten made a motion to move forward with the proposed Station #2 project, completing the plans and other preliminary work, with final construction contract pending a source of funding. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote.