North West Fire District officials haven’t given up hope for building a response station on Smokey Hollow Road, despite the Baldwinsville board of trustees’ June 18 decision to revoke its conditional approval of the NWFD’s request for a zoning exemption.
NWFD Commissioner Jack Kline said the district is gathering more material for the village board, including drive time data, information about alternative sites and details about the U.S. Department of Agriculture Community Facilities Program loan the district had hoped to secure.
“Right now, we’re just kind of waiting for the village,” Kline said.
The NWFD was shooting for the USDA loan’s July 1 local deadline, which has since passed. Now the district must wait until October to apply for the next round of USDA loans. This loan would have had a fixed interest rate as low as 3.1 percent. Kline said the current interest rate would be 3.5 percent, which could change by the time the NWFD gets to reapply in the fall.
“Hopefully it won’t [be] an astronomical jump,” Kline said.
As for the district’s plan is to avoid a tax increase for NWFD residents, Kline said, “That’s still our goal.”
The NWFD will give the board of trustees more details about why other sites weren’t suitable for the new station. The current Station 3, located in the former town of Lysander highway garage on Elizabeth Street, lacks adequate space and has a faulty water system, NWFD officials have told the village.
“It would require substantial investment to make it a real fire house,” Jeff Budrow, an engineer with Weston and Sampson, told the village board in May.
The Baldwinsville Volunteer Fire Company also owns a property on East Oneida Street that the department once presented as an option, but Kline said the village planning board’s requested modifications to the site were too costly.
A second site on Smokey Hollow Road was too far outside the village and had drainage issues, according to Kline. A possible Route 48 site was outside the district as well.
The district also considered the site of the future Stewart’s Shops on the corner of Smokey Hollow and Route 48, but parking lot issues precluded the construction of a fire station.
“It was not a safe place to have a fire station,” Kline said.
The board of trustees next meets at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 16, at the village hall, located at 16 W. Genesee St.
