Plans to build a 14,000-square-foot fire station in southwest Santa Fe might be going up in smoke — at least for the time being.
A possible delay in the construction of a new firehouse points to two primary reasons.
Money. And money.
In one case, it’s too much.
In the other, it’s not enough.
Planned to be built near the intersection of South Meadows Road and N.M. 599, the fire station was meant to serve a densely populated area that includes land the city of Santa Fe annexed from Santa Fe County.
Construction costs initially were pegged at $4.5 million — a number that grew closer to $7 million as estimates were refined. But when the city put the project out to bid, the lowest estimate to build a fire station with “a three bay drive-through apparatus room” and a “multi-function tower for training and a public safety radio system” was just over $8.4 million — about a 20 percent increase.
“The other bids were quite close actually — the next two lowest,” Anson Rane, a public works project administrator, told the Public Works and Utilities Committee on May 11.
Fire Chief Paul Babcock said in a telephone interview that no official decision about whether to move forward with the fire station has been made. But the chances don’t look good, he said.
“Right now, because the cost of the fire station came over what they anticipated, they’re looking at delaying it,” he said. “I have to emphasize, a final decision has not been made, but we’re looking at what our options are at this point.”
City Councilor Chris Rivera, a former city fire chief and committee chairman, said the city’s estimated $100 million budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year could force the project to wait.
“I think it’ll be a tough sell to try to get that done this year,” he said Friday.
Babcock emphasized public safety won’t be in jeopardy if the fire station project gets shelved.
“The city and the county have a mutual aid agreement, meaning if the county needs to come into the city or the city needs to go in the county, that’s already in place,” he said.
Babcock said he’s already been in touch with the county’s fire chief, Erik Litzenberg, who was Babcock’s predecessor at the city.
County spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said the county fire department will continue to provide services until it is told otherwise.
“It doesn’t change the partnership that we have with the city in providing the best service that we can to the public,” she said.
Higher construction costs are only part of the challenge with getting a new fire station off the ground.
Staffing it amid the worst budget shortfall the city has ever faced as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic is also weighing on the decision to proceed with the project.
“The biggest concern for me as the fire chief is the recurring cost of needing six positions for that fire station,” Babcock told the committee May 11.
About $840,000 in annual recurring personnel costs would be required for the station at that level of staffing.
Rivera questioned May 11 whether add-ons “that may or may not have been needed” could be removed from the project to reduce the cost, including the tower and individual bathrooms.
“Is there a way to relook at that and see if it can come down and possibly be rebid?” he asked.
Babcock said the bathrooms were part of a decontamination effort to restrict cancer-causing contaminants from spreading into firefighters’ living areas, which another committee member, City Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler, said she opposed eliminating.
“I think that is really important to the health, safety and welfare of firefighters,” said Vigil Coppler, whose son joined the fire department last year.
“You hardly ever get a chance to have an impact on decontamination because all of our fire stations are already built and don’t include that,” she said. “But if you look at statistics on health and firefighters, cancer from contaminants is really, really high, and it’s a big, big risk.”
The tower is designed not only for training but as a secondary communications site, Babcock said.
Rane, the public works project administrator, said removing the tower from the project would generate “significant savings,” though he didn’t say how much.
A possible delay in construction of a new firehouse has a silver lining.
John Romero, director of the city’s Engineering Division, said shelving the project would “free up at least $7 million or so of capital funding for capitalizable expenses for the upcoming fiscal year.”
Babcock said he was disappointed about the possibility of putting the project on hold.
“It’s going to have to happen at some point,” he said. “Maybe today’s timing, just because of the financial crisis, is inappropriate to move forward with it. I respect that 100 percent. But at some point there’s going to be a need for a fire station out there just because infrastructure is going to grow out there and economic development is going to grow out there. There’s going to be a need for coverage at some point out there.”
Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.
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