By Tatiana Zarnowski
The Daily Gazette
SCHENECTADY, N.Y.— Voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a $2.2 million renovation and addition at the Jonesville Fire District’s station No. 2, and the turnout was far higher than anticipated.
“We were expecting about 200 people,” said Jim Miller, chairman of the fire district commissioners. Instead, more than 500 people showed up.
Both referendum questions in the vote were approved by a large margin: 366 voters OK’d the construction with 151 opposed; and 428 people voted to allow the district to sell two unused pieces of land while 95 opposed selling.
With the approvals in hand, the fire district hopes to start construction in mid-July, with the garage portion finished by the end of October and the rest by the spring of 2013.
It’s the third time the fire district has asked voters to approve a new fire station on the site on Route 146A; the first two times, in 2006, were shot down because they would have required a tax increase and the fire commissioners were asking for a larger building than they did this time.
The 1973 station at 629 Route 146A will get a new roof and new facade, keeping the steel structure and cement floor in the three-bay garage and demolishing the administrative portion of the building, which will be rebuilt and enlarged.
Officials plan to increase the building’s footprint from 6,600 square feet to 10,200 square feet. It also will have an upper mezzanine for training and storage.
The new section would include areas that the current station lacks: training space, a gear room, special laundry facilities for fire gear, better bathrooms, a decontamination room and a larger fitness room.
Fire commissioners say they can build the structure without increasing taxes in the fire district, which covers about a third of Clifton Park. They plan to accomplish that by borrowing $1.2 million and paying off the debt with its current tax levy, taking $585,000 from the building reserve fund, $15,000 from the general fund and selling two properties the district owns but isn’t using.
The fire district owns about seven extra acres on the station No. 2 property behind the station, and owns a three-acre parcel with a house on Clifton Park Center Road, which it bought several years ago with an eye toward building a third station.
But a third station won’t be necessary, Miller has said.
To find a plan that would work for voters, the fire district last year set up a panel that included firefighters and residents alike and came up with a number of options to solve the aging station’s problems — it is too small to hold firefighter training, the heating system is at the end of its lifespan, it needs a new roof and the stucco-like facade sucks up water and is deteriorating.
Syracuse firm Hueber Breuer guided the panel through a nine-month process for $50,000, a fraction of the $250,000 the fire district paid a design firm in 2006.
Miller said the panel deserved the credit.
“This is a lot of hard work by a lot of good people.”
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