Fire Station Plans Take Time Post Falls District Looking At All The Angles

The population in Post Falls is growing like wildfire, and the fire district hasn’t been able to keep up.

Even fire districts associated with smaller, slower-growing cities have more stations than the Post Falls Fire Protection District.

Here, one station covers about 22,000 people in 57 square miles.

Building more stations could decrease the time it takes for the district to respond to fires. That could mean saved lives and salvaged property.

If the Fire District hasn’t built a new station, or at least started to build one by fall, Post Falls residents could pay more for their property insurance.

But the district has had to tackle a few obstacles before being able to build.

“State law didn’t allow us to put any money away for capital expenditures until four years ago,” Fire Chief Lynn Borders said.

The district had been paying off the cost of improving the existing station until last year.

“Looking at our indebtedness, we didn’t want to be any further in debt,” he said.

It also doesn’t ease the fire district’s plight that money from urban renewal districts in Post Falls probably will not go toward building a new fire station, but instead will pay for infrastructure improvements such as sidewalks and better streets.

When the city was planning to create the Riverbend Urban Renewal district, fire commissioners protested the lack of financial help from the urban renewal agency.

They also said the plan amounts to increasing the number of businesses and people the fire district must serve without increasing the corresponding revenue it must spend to do so.

The district also has wanted to thoroughly examine all its options and not make hasty decisions, Borders said.

“We don’t want to build a station that turns out to be not functional down the road because we didn’t take something into consideration,” he said.

The district has recognized the need for more stations since at least 1989, when the Idaho Surveying and Rating Bureau recommended it build one or two more stations.

The bureau, a private organization composed of Idaho property insurance companies, rates fire districts on things like how much water is available, how districts respond to alarms and the stations they have versus how many they need, bureau manager Alfred Frieze said.

Fire district commissioners and firefighters say the time has come for the district to add a building or two.

Insurance agencies base their rates for property insurance in part on what rating the surveying and rating bureau gives the local fire district. The Post Falls Fire District has a rating of six. One is the best rating; 10 is the worst.

“We have fours, sixes and sevens in North Idaho,” said Ed Beck, a State Farm Insurance agent in Post Falls.

For a hypothetical new $100,000 home built in Post Falls, the homeowner would pay $268 annually for property insurance with State Farm, Beck said. The homeowner would pay $231 in Coeur d’Alene, where the fire department’s rating is four, he said.

“If they (homeowners) look at what the average difference is between class six and class four in insurance costs, that would probably be no different than the cost they’d pay for a new station,” he said.

More important, adding fire stations in Post Falls could reduce the time it takes the district to respond to fires, possibly saving lives.

“Post Falls’ problem is that they’re real narrow and real long,” said Rich Kirsch, interim fire chief for the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department. “The response time is what’s going to save that building and if you’re running out of one station, that’s really going to increase.”

Marion Blackwell, chief of the Athol Fire Protection District, said his district is “nowhere near as populated as Post Falls.

“I’m very surprised they don’t have more stations. They actually need two more stations,” he said.

Lt. Brad Belmont of the Hayden Lake Fire Protection District praised the Post Falls district for performing as well as it does with only one station.

The Hayden Lake district has two stations serving roughly the same area and population.

The Post Falls district is trying to determine where to construct any new buildings.

Jim Watson of Watson and Associates donated one acre to the district in the Expo site in Post Falls, and the Jacklin family has talked to the district about possibly donating some land in the Riverbend Commerce Park area, Borders said.

The fire district owns five acres near the National Guard Armory that could be a site for a station, but probably would work better as a training site, Fire Commissioner Joe Venishnick said.

Post Falls resident Joseph Gore has talked to the district about possibly donating property he owns at 16th Avenue and Highway 41, Borders said.

Venishnick estimated the cost of building a new fire station would be between $700,000 and $1 million.

“We want to do it as economically as possible so it doesn’t impact the taxpayer negatively,” Venishnick said.

There are plenty of other costs associated with running a fire district.

Outfitting a single firefighter with protective clothing and gear costs between $1,500 and $1,700. And there is the cost of maintaining all the district’s 17 vehicles.

“All of these (vehicles) are getting up there in age and we want to be working diligently on a replacement program,” Borders said.

The district’s two primary fire engines, for example, are both 22 years old.

The district hasn’t set a timeline yet for building a new station, but no matter what the district decides to do, it’s hoping for plenty of public input, Borders said.

“The more people know, the more questions we can answer and the fewer problems we’ll have,” he said.