DEMOREST — A non-agenda item drew the most attention at Tuesday night’s Demorest City Council called meeting and work session.
Following a lengthy closed session to discuss acquisition of real estate at the end of the meeting, Mayor Rick Austin made a limited announcement about the Demorest Municipal Building, where the council holds its meetings and which houses Demorest Fire Department.
“During executive session tonight, we discussed the current structural instability and integrity of our fire department building,” Mayor Rick Austin announced upon returning to open session. “During that discussion, we discussed multiple parcels of land that might be available to construct any potential solution to our current fire department facility.”
The current fire department/municipal building was built in the 1990s, with the fire department upstairs and the city council chambers/courtroom downstairs.
“At this point in time, we have no further comment regarding the assessment of this facility or any other potential solution,” Austin announced. “We should have further information and potential solutions for discussion in early July. We’ve had this building assessed. We are awaiting a written assessment of the building. This council has discussed, and we understand, the weightiness of this particular decision, and we wanted to make sure that the public understands that we are aware and that we are moving forward with a potential solution, and we are in evaluation mode at this point, but anticipate to have something as quickly as possible as we move forward.”
Asked after the meeting whether the building where that council meeting was held was safe for occupancy, Austin said, “We’ve been told verbally that this building is safe at this point in time. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve also been told, although I have not received the written report, that we’ve been told not to park the fire trucks inside the station at this point. If that’s going to be the case in the written report, then we’ve got until freezing temperatures to find a solution.”
Austin said the city has not determined where a possible new building would be located, but in previous discussions city officials have said any relocation of the fire department needs to be done in a manner that doesn’t negatively affect the ISO insurance rating of any properties covered by the department.
Austin declined to talk about possibilities for relocation of the facility, including whether the courtroom/council chambers would move with the fire station.
“That was a part of the conversation,” Austin said. “No decisions have been made regarding whether or not the courtroom moves with it at this point in time or stays where it is. As you can imagine, there are multiple moving targets in this conversation, and I again tasked staff to get those multiple moving targets. I will be a part of those conversations as we bring all those options to the table to determine exactly what will happen, what will go where, and we’ll move forward.”
Currently, the fire department is located upstairs in the building on Ivy Street, while city court, city council meetings and voting are held in the basement.
This structural development came at a busy time for Demorest officials, who are planning the largest Glorious Fourth of July Celebration and concert in the event’s history.
“Again, we discussed multiple potential parcels, and so a lot of those conversations are going to have to occur in the next two weeks, in addition to the Fourth of July events that we need to continue to work toward, so there’s a lot of work to be done between now and our meeting on July 10,” Austin said. “But I’d like to come to some resolution as to what that game plan is on July 10. Again, council understands the weightiness of this particular decision, and I’ve asked the fire chief and staff to get together a long list of options so that the council can consider everything that is at our disposal as we seek to rectify and to better this particular situation.”
Austin acknowledged the issue has been developing over time, so it’s been on the minds of city leaders. Unfortunately, recent developments are the reason for concerns.
“We’ve been aware of the structural condition and have periodically had it evaluated,” Austin said. “It’s come to our attention that just in recent days the condition of the structural stability has declined.”
Austin said city leaders will keep the public informed of developments as they learn what the future might hold for relocation of facilities.
“It’s not a budgeted expense in this time period, so part of the heavy work that will have to be done is determining debt service, what are the potential funding sources that don’t require debt, so we have a lot of work to do in a relatively short amount of time,” Austin said.
Austin said the city has come far in the fire protection realm over the past few years.
“As you well know, we’ve been a full-time fire department for a few years,” Austin said. “Moving us from a part-time/volunteer fire department to a full-time fire department was a monumental task – one that I am greatly proud of and one that has served this community, and outside this community through automatic aid agreements, very well, nobly I might add. In the process of becoming a full-time fire department and through the hard work of Chief [Ken] Ranalli, we were able to lower the ISO from a 5 to a 3 and missed getting an ISO of 2 by 0.04 points, so we intend to continue to serve with full-time fire service."
In addition to homes and other businesses inside the city limits, Demorest Fire Department provides primary response to Piedmont College, Wilbanks Middle School, Demorest Elementary School, Habersham Medical Center.
“We need to take care of our fire department, and we need to take care of our firefighters and our equipment that obviously has been invested by this community,” Austin said. “We’re going to do our best to do that in the most cost-efficient, most effective way that we possibly can. It remains to be seen how that is going to manifest itself.”
The council’s next meeting was rescheduled to 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 10, because of Glorious Fourth of July preparations next week.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2018/6/685945/structural-issues-accelerate-planning-for-replacement-demorest-fire-department