- November 14, 2024
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The city's oldest fire station — built in 1977 and needing new smoke detectors, among other things — will get about $100,000 in repairs.
The money will replace Fire Station 22's old smoke detectors, add door sensors and an exhaust for the truck bays and a firewall between the bays and the living space, and improve the living quarters. But when it's all over, city officials want another change: They want the two county Emergency Services staff members who have been stationed at the facility, along with a county ambulance, moved to another station a couple of miles down the road.
The city fire station, now housing five rescuers — the two county staff members, plus three city of Palm Coast staff members — is just too small to handle them all comfortably, officials said. The ideal solution would be a roomier new station, either built at the same site or on nearby city-owned land on Colbert Lane. For one thing, the bay doors on station are built for an era when fire engines were smaller, and they're so small that fire trucks have to be custom built to fit inside.
But there's no money for a new station, City Manager Jim Landon told the City Council at a meeting May 17.
"The fact of it is that the $2 million to replace this, we just don’t have it right now unless you’re going to delay something else, like the Community Center," Landon said at the meeting. "We feel like this is a good short-term solution. Leaving it like it is for the next few years would, I think, be inappropriate."
Palm Coast Mayor Jon Netts, speaking at a City Council workshop a week before after a morning tour of the fire station, had called the situation "unacceptable."
“If this were a commercial building in Palm Coast, our fire safety inspectors would give it quite a negative check mark,” he said. “Based on what I saw this morning, if that building is going to stay on another year, these improvements are necessary.”
City staff members expect that the improvements will give the station another 10 years of usability. As for the county staff members, Landon said, "It will still accommodate their crews, but we’re not designing around their crews," and the city hopes the county will move its two personnel members to Station 24.
City Councilman McGuire asked about making the construction contingent on the county moving its staff members elsewhere. Doing that, Landon replied, would give the county power over a city project.
"You’ve got five men and women in there who are uncomfortable, when we could make all of them comfortable" by splitting them up, he said.
Councilman Jason DeLorenzo said he wasn't comfortable giving the county an ultimatum. "Without having the information — the call volume, the call locations — I’m not comfortable saying 'No, you need to be elsewhere,' just because we want our people to be more comfortable."
The City Council approved the construction for $100,000 and directed Landon to met with county staff about where the two county staff members now stationed at Station 22 will be housed in the future.
