The Okanogan County Fire District 6 commissioners and chief discussed plans for a new Winthrop fire station, at a meeting held July 8 in Twisp. From left are commissioners Les Stokes, Darold Brandenburg and Jerry Palm; and Fire Chief Cody Acord.
Stokes says a $3.8 million levy wouldn’t pass
Editor’s note: Article updated on 7/31/19 to correct the original owner of the land the district purchased in 2009.
Fire commissioners are close to approving a floor plan for a new Winthrop fire station that could then be pitched to the public as part of a levy campaign.
One of the three commissioners of Okanogan County Fire District 6, Les Stokes, is not quite on board yet. The other two, commissioners Darold Brandenburg and Jerry Palm, would like to show a unanimous front when they ask voters to pay for the new station through a property tax.
Stokes has heard the critics of the last two fire-station levies the district tried to pass. A $5 million bond measure failed in 2008. Then the fire station plans were cut in half — both in floorplan and in cost — only to have a $2.4 million levy fail in 2014. Critics still deemed the proposed fire station too large and too expensive.
The latest draft of the floorplan shows a 11,954-square-foot station — 7% smaller than in 2014 — at a cost of $3.3 million to $3.8 million, as estimated by the project’s architect, George Watson of the Spokane firm Watson & Herres. Commissioners have a few options for cutting costs, such as replacing masonry in some areas with wood-frame construction. If the site were cleared with volunteer labor prior to building, the district would save $200,000.
Based on the district’s track record at the polls, Stokes said the price tag for the new station is too high.
“We’re going to have a tough sell on that much money and the amount of time it’s going to take to bond for,” Stokes said at the commissioners’ July 8 meeting at Twisp Fire Station. With an anticipated 20-year loan, interest payments would add another $1.4 million to $1.6 million to the total cost.
“I would support 1.5 [million dollars],” Stokes said, referring to the cost before interest. “People won’t vote for 3.8 or 3.5.”
Fire District 6 officials want to build a new Winthrop fire hall on 5 acres on Horizon Flats Road.
Stokes also criticized the location of the station, a 5-acre site on Horizon Flats Road the district purchased from Donald White in 2009. The station has only one route to Highway 20 and is about 90 seconds away from the highway. Stokes had approved the location with the other two commissioners in November.
“The site really does need to be on SR 20, in my estimation, or within a very short distance,” Stokes said.
Commissioners hope to replace the current 4,400-square-foot fire station on Englar Street in Winthrop. Fire district officials have been saying for years the building is too small, and it jeopardizes the health and safety of firefighters.
Room by room
Palm spent two hours at the July 8 meeting going through the floor plan room by room, to see where Stokes thought the district could cut costs.
The floor plan includes six vehicle bays, a dormitory, a kitchen, a meeting room, storage rooms, a decontamination room, offices and a multi-purpose room on the second floor — among others.
Firefighters could use the multi-purpose room to train with equipment during the winter, commissioners said. The meeting room would be large enough to hold training sessions for every firefighter in the district.
The dorm room and kitchen would encourage firefighters to stay at the station, improving response times, according to a fire station needs assessment Fire Chief Cody Acord completed for the district earlier this year.
“We have to have something that keeps the volunteers engaged and happy and satisfied,” Brandenburg said. “Our responsibility is to the safety of the public and the firefighters, and we gotta keep them happy or else we won’t have any.”
Acord encouraged the commissioners to decide the station’s layout and estimated cost soon.
“Don’t wait too long to make a decision on this,” Acord said. “The more we wait, the more that cost estimate can go up.”
With that in mind, commissioners voted to hold a special meeting at 7 p.m. on Monday (July 29), at the Twisp station, 434 Second Ave., to continue their conversation about the new station — and perhaps come to a unanimous agreement on the floorplan.
After reviewing the floorplan in detail at the meeting, Palm turned to Stokes:
“How many rooms too many do we have, Les?”
“I know we have a use for every single one of them,” Stokes replied. “The question is, can we get it down [in price] to a point where the bond’s going to float?”
Stokes had suggested making the new fire station a steel-frame building, which he thought could be built for $2 million or less, but the idea didn’t gain any traction at the meeting.
Palm and Acord said some of the rooms in the proposed floorplan are too small — for example, the room off the vehicle bays for washing and storing firehose.
“We really don’t have the size that we want, but we’re going to make it work,” Palm said.
Levy amount
A financial analysis that Ralph Carlberg prepared for the district recommends using part of any upcoming levy to pay off the loan used in 2009 to purchase the Horizon Flats property for $325,000. The district would save money, as the interest on the new loan would be lower than the 4.9% being paid on the property loan. Carlberg assumes an interest rate of 3.5% on a new loan.
A property tax levy that would pay for a $3.8 million station and retire the property debt would be 19.9 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value within the fire district, according to Carlberg’s analysis. At that rate, the owner of a $300,000 home would pay about $5 a month.
Carlberg lowered his estimated levy rate slightly by assuming $10,000 of the fire district’s operating funds would go toward debt payments each year. The district has had an operating surplus of $20,000 per year on average over the past seven years, Carlberg said.
Commissioners have options for raising property taxes. If they decide to ask voters to increase the rate of the levy the district already collects for its operations, the measure must pass by a simple majority. If they ask for a separate levy, to repay a bond, the vote requires a 60% majority.
No election date has been set. Acord told commissioners if the ballot went out in April or August of next year, they could seek construction bids the following November or December — a time of year when bids would be more competitive.
After the levy failed in 2014, commissioners sought bids on the new fire station in April 2015 as part of an effort to determine whether they could finance construction without a vote. Bids came in much higher than expected and well beyond what the district could afford. Commissioners have said the bids were high because construction season had already started.
