Revelstoke fire department spending cause for alarm?

By Aaron Orlando - Revelstoke Times Review Published: December 26, 2010 4:00 AM

The City of Revelstoke's Fire Rescue Services felt some heat when it came under focus during the 2011-2015 financial plan deliberations at a Dec. 21 committee of the whole meeting.The meeting was the third city budget meeting and focused primarily on the fire department budget.
New $5 million satellite fire station planned for resort area
The department's plans to build a new $5 million dollar fire station near Revelstoke Mountain Resort touched off discussions. Fire Chief Rob Girard said the station was necessary to improve response times to the resort. He said the plan was to build a facility that would house other emergency services, such as an RCMP community policing station, an ambulance and other emergency responder programs."Rather than being reactive, it is a proactive step on behalf of all emergency services," Girard said.He argued current response times to the resort were slow, over the critical 10-minute mark.He was also concerned about the department's ability to serve neighbourhoods south of the Illecillewaet River if anything ever happened to the bridge over that river. Planning director John Guenther echoed Girard's concern about response times to the resort. "10 minutes is a pretty critical time," he said, saying flashover occurs around that point. He also added that the city wouldn't pay the full $5 million, and that the resort would also contribute. He didn't elaborate on what the cost to the city would be. Finance director and acting CAO Graham Inglis said the satellite station didn't need to fall into the 2012 budget year as proposed in his preliminary plan, but said, "it is certainly something that we need to be thinking about in the not too distant future."  Coun. Tony Scarcella wasn't in favour of the expenditure, saying Revelstoke needed the new fire station "like we need a hole in our head."  "That should be off the list completely," Scarcella continued. "A lot of people are upset about that. It should be off the plan."  Coun. Chris Johnston asked if there was land set aside.  Guenther said a provision for land for the new station was outlined in the resort Master Development Plan agreement with the province.The committee discussed pushing the item back. The committee is still at the information and review stage of the budget, so no decisions were made.(more)