As long as it properly addresses the village’s concerns through site plan review, the North West Fire District gets to move forward in its quest to build a fire response station on Smokey Hollow Road.
The village’s board of trustees passed a resolution June 4 granting the North West Fire District an exemption from the Planned Development District zoning. The board referred the matter to the Village Planning Board.
The board of trustees voted unanimously for this conditional approval, but Mayor Dick Clarke said the decision was not easy, given the high emotions on both sides of the issue.
“I am extremely proud of our village for having people come in here [to comment and] not be nasty knowing they might not get what they want,” Clarke said. “Hopefully, this will proceed and we will end up with a good project. We’ll be able to say this was the best that it could be.”
Should the planning board approve the fire district’s site plan for a nearly 11,000-square-foot building with four bays and bunk-in rooms, the village board will have final say over whether the project goes forward. The NWFD is aiming to secure a U.S. Department of Agriculture Community Facilities Program loan with a deadline of July 1.
The village board’s decision came after a public hearing that began May 21 and ended June 4. Many residents spoke out against the proposed fire station, citing concerns such as property value, drainage issues and noise pollution.
Others spoke in support of the idea. Louise Rutherford, a commissioner for the NWFD, presented a petition with 188 signatures of those in favor of building the fire station to the village board.
Bill Hopper, a member of the Baldwinsville Volunteer Fire Company, said navigating to and from the current Station 3 on Elizabeth Street is “difficult to do because of the traffic patterns.”
“The placement of this fire station is not for me — it’s for the constituents in this room,” Hopper said.
Brian Sinsabaugh, an attorney with Cazenovia-based law firm Curtin and DeJoseph, said he represented residents of the area near the proposed site. Village Attorney Bob Baldwin said residents are entitled to have their legal representation speak for them at the public hearing, so Sinsabaugh was allowed to present a list of his clients’ concerns, chiefly the lack of alternate locations for the new station, drainage, aesthetics and noise.
Sinsabaugh said building the fire station would not be “harmonious” with the PDD’s intent of mainly residential construction.
“I really do urge the board to step back,” Sinsabaugh said, asking the board to deny the fire district’s application for a zone exemption.
During the board’s discussion before the vote, Trustee Mark Wilder expressed concerns about the Smokey Hollow Road location.
“I’m not convinced about the magnitude of the research of alternate locations,” Wilder said at Thursday’s meeting.
NWFD Chief Tom Perkins said the district addressed that in a June 1 informational meeting. At that presentation, district representatives explained that they looked into several other sites, including a property on East Oneida Street in the village owned by the Baldwinsville Volunteer Fire Company. The BVFC is looking to sell the property because they would have had to raise the grade of the land significantly to build a new station there. Another possibility was a former dollar store in the village, but Perkins said during the June 1 meeting that the owner did not want to include the entire parking lot in the deal.
“There are people saying we didn’t look at anything else — we have been looking,” Perkins said June 1.
Perkins said there were no other suitable, vacant properties for sale when the district acquired the Smokey Hollow Road site from St. Mary’s.
NWFD presents more details
At the June 1 informational meeting, which was held at Station 1 on Crego Road in Van Buren, NWFD representatives shared more details of the proposed new Station 3 and the addition to Station 1.
The NWFD is seeking a $6 million loan with an interest rate as low as 3.1 percent from the USDA Community Facilities Program. The proposed Smokey Hollow Road station will cost $3 million to build. The district plans to use $1.3 million to acquire the BVFC’s remaining properties. Currently, the NWFD leases Stations 1 and 2 from the BFD; a condition of the USDA funding is that the fire district acquire those stations. Finally, the district will put $1 million toward an addition to Station 1, which was built in 2011. The addition will include a large meeting room, kitchen, bathrooms and four bunk-in spaces.
At 52 square miles, the NWFD is one of the largest fire districts in the county, according to Fire Commissioner Jack Klein. When residents asked why the new station had to be in the village, district representatives said the village is the most densely populated part of the district and includes high-risk locations such as schools, churches and workplaces. Klein said the northern part of the district, which covers much of the town of Lysander, is less dense in terms of population.
Fire Chief Courtney Rutherford said there are 7,500 residents of the village of Baldwinsville, and the population is growing. Rutherford said roughly 80 percent of the calls the NWFD answers occur within the district itself; 20 percent are mutual aid calls to assist in neighboring fire districts such Belgium-Cold Springs. Rutherford said the district answered 912 calls in 2014; 51 percent were rescue or emergency medical calls and 49 percent were fire incidents. Forty-one percent of the calls occurred at night, the remainder during the day. The current Station 3 answers an average of 2.5 calls per day.
“Some days we might have none, some days we might have three or four,” Rutherford said.
Rutherford said the current average response time from Station 3 is 3.18 minutes; the new station would reduce that time to 2.13 minutes.
“That’s going to give us a real good margin of stopping an incipient fire,” Rutherford said, adding that a fire doubles in size every one to two minutes.
Fire protection specialist Rich Barletti explained that the new station could help the NWFD reduce its ISO fire suppression rating. ISO is a safety data service owned by Verisk Analytics that helps insurance companies determine premiums. Barletti said the village has the most “high hazard” areas, such as schools, apartment buildings and the waterfront.
“What’s really important and what the village board really needs to focus on is the impact on a few is outweighed by the greater good of the many,” said Tony Amalfitano, a member of the NWFD’s building committee. “Whatever we build at the end, we want to be a good neighbor. We want to fit in with the community.”
District must address concerns
At the June 4 village board meeting, Trustee Mark Wilder said he would like to see a report of how the NWFD plans to address concerns from both the planning board and residents.
“We want to make sure there’s a balance,” Wilder said.
The planning board has yet to approve the SEQR action for the NWFD’s application. At the planning board’s May 26 meeting, Jeff Budrow, an engineer with Weston and Sampson, said the fire district would be bound by the federal Clean Water Act to have a stormwater management plan for the proposed station, but he had no details on what that plan would entail. The district also will have to conduct soil testing of the property.
As for the issue of wetlands, Budrow said there is a 141-foot buffer between the site and DEC map freshwater wetlands. The legal minimum is 100 feet. Budrow said there is no required buffer for federal wetlands. Budrow said June 1 he expected construction would occur “a few hundred feet away” from the federal wetlands located in the rear of the Smokey Hollow Road property, which have not been mapped.
As for the concern about the elderly residents of St. Mary’s Apartments, Wilder said any issue there should have been “addressed by St. Mary’s when they sold the property.”
Trustee Rick Presley said the proximity of the proposed station to the homes of firefighters was not a factor in his vote.
“Response times based on the members’ residence is a short-term given, so I don’t weigh that heavily,” he said.
The village planning board next meets at 7:30 p.m. June 23.
