Fire station, cuts needed

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: October 18, 2008

Gentle ripples of acrimony returned to the Waynesboro City Council over a subject previously divisive. A year after voters provided their imprimatur for the construction of a fire station in the West End, the city later this month will borrow $2.6 million for the project, one that never has been to Vice Mayor Frank Lucente’s liking. He reluctantly agreed to back the new firehouse after last fall’s referendum election, but on Tuesday revived a long-held objection to its operating cost, expected to be $1 million to $1.5 million annually.

“The operation,” Lucente said, “will cost the city for years and years.” Well, naturally. But Lucente fears something else, a necessity to raise taxes, a prospect Councilwoman Nancy Dowdy dismisses as irrelevant in juxtaposition with public safety. Both Lucente and Dowdy – who stand on opposing sides of a loosely drawn philosophical line and carry the council’s strongest voices – have their points.

Fire Chief Charles Scott says he needs a dozen additional firefighters to form a third engine company at the new firehouse, which is expected to improve city response times by 18 percent. Lucente prefers that Scott move firefighters already on the payroll to the new station, which he envisions as something akin to a substation, an outpost rather than a fully functional firehouse.

Whether voters share this vision is another question. Lucente guards tax dollars in the fashion of a bear protecting her young, which is to say with claws, teeth and a fierce snarl. But it is not a building voters approved so much as its function, which is to allow responders to reach fires faster. If the number of city firefighters is insufficient to fulfill this task, then why bother to build the firehouse in the first place? To which Lucente might answer: Exactly.

On that point, we and Lucente disagree. As the city’s fastest growing area with its bustling retail corridors, the West End needs the public safety enhancements a new firehouse – which also will include a satellite office for police – can provide. The transformation of that section from plots of vacant land off the interstate into a hub of activity requires that the city act to keep pace with increasing safety demands. Resisters to development frequently cite public safety as a hidden cost. It is not a prohibitive one, as such groups are fond of suggesting, but neither should it be discounted.

Lucente frequently has argued that a new station will increase overall response times by only 18 percent, and he contends that improved times can be more cheaply gained by adding devices to allow emergency responders to change lights to green at intersections. Of course, the West End station will not improve response times in the opposite end of the city, so of course it will not impact all of the city, just that area most traveled. As for the signal devices, by all means, purchase them. But signal devices cannot suffice as a substitute for a new firehouse.

Nonetheless, Lucente’s concerns should not be dismissed, as is the wont of free spenders. From this corner, we dare not venture speculation on what precisely will be needed to operate a new firehouse. Scott as chief is the expert on this subject. But we know two things. First, the nature of those paid with government money is to seek optimums rather than what is merely necessary. A rule of government is that it always pursues more rather than less. And the second is a corollary: Government always can make do with less.

That is a necessity in an era of financial crisis that is forming a stranglehold on taxpayers’ pocketbooks. For a city government with an annual budget of just $39 million, an extra $1 million to $1.5 million in spending is significant. We do not know whether that cost can be whittled away to almost nothing by restricting Scott from hiring additional firefighters. But if Lucente’s call can be taken as one for restraint, applying in the current political vernacular a scalpel rather than an ax, then it should be heeded. So to Scott and the council we say: Start cutting.