Despite the mayor’s attempt to shelve the project, the city will dig into its pockets to overhaul St. Albert’s aging downtown fire station.
Mayor Nolan Crouse proposed deleting the $500,000 cost of design work in 2012 for renovations to 47-year-old fire station No. 1.
But Crouse’s motion wasn’t met without debate, and was eventually rejected by council.
“Walking through it, it’s certainly not something I am proud to say is a great architectural icon of St. Albert, shall we say,” said Coun. James Burrows. “Let’s plan the future and let’s do it right. To take this out of the budget, I just don’t agree that is smart planning.”
City administration advised the downtown facility on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue is nearly at the end of its usefulness, with many of the internal systems failing or starting to fail. The building is too small to house more than one piece of fire apparatus because the vehicle bays are too low.
Fire Chief Ray Richards recently described living conditions in the sleep area, kitchen, workout and change rooms as “deplorable.”
Initially, city administration recommended building a new facility after engineering reports showed repairs wouldn’t come cheap — at 70 per cent of the replacement cost.
Administration has since had a change of heart and now proposes modernizing the facility to address the urgent needs.
St. Albert opened its newest station, the $13-million fire station No. 3, last February.
The design plan for the fire station was among more than 30 capital budget motions council debated this week.
Debate centred around everything from back alley repairs and bike racks for transit buses, to dirt bike tracks for mountain bikers, street signage, and more cash for snow and ice control.
If everything is passed as planned, city buses will likely be equipped with bike racks to encourage more transit users to go green. The racks would cost about $75,000 to install on all 58 conventional transit buses, and would allow cyclists to ride to bus stop or transit centre, load their bike and ride the bus to another location.
At the moment, no bikes are allowed on city buses.
In Edmonton, bike racks are available on three routes and are being deemed as standard equipment on all new bus purchases.
Council also agreed to get the wheels in motion to find $200,000 to pay for a recreation dirt bike mogul track in 2012.
Since mountain bikers are not allowed in the skateboard park, many are forced to make the trek to Rabbit Hill in the summer months. Crouse would like to see that change.
“When I looked at the budget, I thought, what are we doing for our youth?” said Crouse. “I thought if we could afford it, what a great opportunity to extend our hand to youth. It’s important and we would like to figure out in the next year or two a way to fund it.”
In order to maintain and bring service levels back to where they once were 10 years ago, Coun. Lorie Garritty suggested adding $237,700 to the budget for snow and ice control, and pavement maintenance. That motion, however, was defeated.
Budget deliberations resume Monday at 2 p.m.
