April 26, 2024
By: Dwayne Page
The county budget committee is being asked to set aside another $100,000 in seed money from the capital projects fund for the future development of a new public safety building to house a fire truck in the Wolf Creek community.
County Fire Chief Donny Green made this request during Thursday night’s meeting of the budget committee as one of the top three most immediate needs of the fire department with the backing of the county’s Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee which recently met with Chief Green and voted to join him in making the recommendation for this action.
For the last several years the county commission has set aside seed money for future construction of a fire hall at Wolf Creek and that fund has grown to $150,000. Green said adding another $100,000 would just about be enough to build the facility.
‘We started out a few years ago setting aside $25,000. We put back another $25,000 the second year. We later sold some surplus equipment, and I took $50,000 out of that surplus equipment (sales) and put it in that (seed money) fund. We have added to the fund since then and are now up to $150,000. I am asking this year for an additional $100,000 to go into that fund to give us a total of $250,000. Based on estimates, that is what a two-bay station will cost us at the Wolf Creek station. Even that would not give us a fancy building. It would be a wood frame building similar to like what we built at Liberty except this one would be two bays instead of three bays,” said Chief Green.
The proposed location for the safety building is on property owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers under a partnership agreement still in the making between the county and the corps which would permit the county to build this public safety building on a site near Center Hill Dam at the county’s expense, but the Corps would have ownership of the building and bear the cost of utilities going forward. Under terms of the agreement, Green said the Corps wants the facility to be called a public safety building and not a fire hall so that other agencies could make use of it including the TWRA, THP, Sheriff’s Department, and Rescue Squad etc.
The building at this site would be centrally located in the Wolf Creek area to serve communities on both sides of Center Hill Dam.
In the event the budget committee does not put back the additional $100,000 in seed money for the Wolf Creek project this year, Chief Green said he and the County’s Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee are recommending that the funds be set aside for the future development of a district fire station model.
“This model provides for a district station in each of our three fire districts in the county,” said Chief Green. “A district station is one that has a fire engine, tanker, and a brush truck similar to what we have at Liberty. Now that we have the one at Liberty, I would eventually like to have one at Keltonburg and at the Midway station where we already have land and are operating out of buildings that are already way too small. Those were original buildings that were built in 1975 under the Model Cities Grant Program. Back then they were operating with homemade two-ton trucks that were much shorter and smaller than the fire trucks you see today. At some of our firehalls like Short Mountain, to get in the station you have to raise the bay door because you can’t walk between the bay door and the fire engine. That’s how tight it is. We literally have to cram it (fire truck) in there,” said Chief Green.
Meanwhile, Chief Green, along with the County’s Health, Education, and Public Welfare Committee, are asking that the budget committee allocate $640,000 for 75 new county fire department portable radios under the new Tennessee Advanced Communications Network (TACN) system should the county’s regional application for funding through the FEMA Assistance to Firefighter Grant not be approved.
“Our department agreed that we would forego the original local funding allocation for the portable radios, even though it was done for ambulance service and sheriff’s department radios. We (fire department) agreed to hold off on our radios at the time in order to apply for a FEMA grant. That application has been filed and we will know probably in early August or September whether we get funded for that. In our previous discussions, the county commission agreed that if we didn’t get funded under the grant we would come back and revisit funding the radios locally for the fire department. That is 75 portable radios for $640,000. Those radios are $8,500 each. The state contract has taken care of the ambulance service and sheriff’s department and their radios are already ordered and we would be under the same contract. I hope we get the grant. 911 Director Brad Mullinax and I worked hard putting all that together. If we get funded that’s great but if we don’t the reality is we will have to buy the radios or we will be the only department out there without communication abilities,” said Chief Green.
The budget committee has not yet acted on Chief Green’s request.