Vancouver gets $2.3 million to reopen fire station

A $2.3 million federal grant announced Friday will allow Vancouver to reopen the currently closed Fire Station 6.

The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant provides money for two years and would allow Vancouver to hire 13 new firefighters to restaff the station, which had served the Burton area from its location at 3216 N.E. 112th Ave.

The city council must give final approval to the SAFER grant; it said in February that it would commit to accepting the funds. City Manager Eric Holmes said Friday that a June reopening is a “possibility,” although training and other timing factors may delay it a bit longer.

The grant, however, also requires the city to keep its firefighter staff at 165 for the duration of the grant, meaning that if further budget reductions are necessary, they must come from other deeply cut departments.

“This is great news! We need to get Station 6 reopened and restore adequate response times in the city,” Councilor Bart Hansen said by email, responding to the news. “I look forward to discussing this at council.”

Fire Station 6, which had housed one of the city’s two ladder trucks, closed Dec. 31. Fire Chief Joe Molina reported that in January, average response times to calls went up by 3 minutes and 48 seconds compared with the previous year — from 5 minutes and 12 seconds in 2010 to 9 minutes this year.

Heights resident Mary Elkin, founder of Friends of Fire Station 6, also heralded the announcement of the Federal Emergency Management Agency grant.

“Today, we are closer in our mission to protect the fire and police services provided to citizens and to promote public awareness of what staffing and equipment police and fire departments need to accomplish the task of keeping citizens and our first responders safe,” she said by email Friday.

The grant won’t come without some potential wrinkles: Vancouver has a projected deficit of $2 million to $4 million over the next two years, and an unresolved labor contract with the firefighters’ union that likely won’t be settled before summer.

In February, the mayor and several councilors seemed wary. No layoffs in the fire department for two years — and the possibility that the cost of firefighters’ salaries and benefits could increase — could mean cuts in other areas.

“I have reservations on moving forward and on the timing of this,” Mayor Tim Leavitt said Feb. 7. “If arbitration goes the way our fire suppression unit would like it to go, we’re going to have to make layoffs in other departments. Other departments are going to have to take a hit.”

However, he joined a majority of the council that night to say that Vancouver would accept the federal money if it was offered.

Among other potential downsides: The grant would not cover the $190,000 costs of operating Fire Station 6 for two years, nor would it pay the $180,000 in training and equipment costs for the 13 new staff members. Those 13 firefighters would also be guaranteed a job for only two years, as the SAFER grant does not require Vancouver to employ them longer than that.

Holmes recommended Friday, nevertheless, that the council accept the money. He said it wasn’t a permanent solution, but “a ‘bridge’ strategy to work with stakeholders on cost containment and engage the community in longer term revenue discussions.”

Holmes said that he will brief the council on April 4 and try to get further direction that the council wants to accept the grant. The city council would formally accept the money when it adopts its spring supplementary budget in May.

Thirteen new firefighters will give the Burton station a three-person crew around the clock, seven days a week. The grant gives the city 90 days to hire them, but Molina said that after the February indication by the council that it would accept the money, he began preliminary recruiting.

“The need for this grant was strong and our application laid that out very clearly,” Molina said. “In anticipation of being successful in getting the grant, we started the process of recruiting, testing and screening possible candidates a couple of months ago. The interviews start this weekend, and we hope to have the 13 candidates identified and ready to begin training in June, if not before.”

The firefighter grant follows two 2010 federal grants for police staffing: A $2.58 million Community Oriented Policing Services grant awarded in August is paying entry-level salaries and benefits for 10 officers who would have otherwise been laid off in city budget cuts. Another COPS grant, which brought the city $493,000 in November, will reimburse the police department for the entry-level salary and benefits costs for one officer and one civilian computer forensic investigator. Both last two years.