Council had a lot of questions and concerns for the town's fire chief after he came to town hall asking for support to relocate Niagara-on-the-Lake Fire & Emergency Services from Old Town to Virgil.
Fire Chief Jay Plato made a presentation during Tuesday evening’s committee of the whole meeting, outlining the need to relocate staff from Old Town to Virgil.
After a lengthy discussion, instead of approving the move, council asked staff to look into the details of the proposal and come back to it with more information.
They wouldn't be approving the move necessarily, Plato said: They would be supporting the proposed project, assigning the $175,000 to the project and directing staff to issue a request for proposal.
Plato said fire and emergency services' recommendation was not to begin construction, but rather to be ready when the time comes to begin construction on a new building.
The relocation would create a more community-accessible and efficient fire department, Plato said.
The proposal includes asking council to allocate $175,000 of capital reserves to be used for architectural and construction drawings of the proposed relocation.
The funding would be reallocated from two capital projects, which came in significantly under budget, Plato said.
“$200,000 is coming back into capital reserves. What we’re hoping to do is reallocate $175,000 of that.”
Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa questioned why this presentation was not made during budget discussions two months ago.
Plato said he had hoped the town would have a new chief administrative officer by the time of the presentation.
“In all reality, this project has been on the table for about a year,” he said.
“We were waiting for a new CAO to bring this project forward.”
Plato said the hope for stability with someone in the permanent CAO role meant the fire department kept delaying the proposal.
Zalepa said he is not comfortable moving forward with the project after a lengthy council discussion.
“I think there are more questions than I feel comfortable moving forward with. There’s some more work to be done here to move to a better place,” he said.
Several councillors raised concerns and questions to Plato during his presentation.
Coun. Erwin Wiens was confused as to how the $175,000 price tag was reached.
“It costs $175,000 to go to an architect and say, 'Give me drawings?'" Wiens said.
Coun. Andrew Niven wanted to clarify just how accurate the new proposed response times of a station in Old Town would be.
Plato’s presentation included two maps illustrating Old Town versus Virgil fire station six-minute response times — the Virgil station was able to reach much more of the community faster than Old Town.
Niven asked Plato to confirm that he is confident in the drive time proposed.
“That’s the only thing that really stands out to me,” Niven said.
Plato confirmed he is happy with the data in the report.
Coun. Sandra O’Connor said she could not support the move to Virgil due to "several risk factors."
“Our community risk map shows several blocks in Old Town as high-risk,” she said, referring to the likelihood of fires breaking out in the area.
Plato noted the fire department added more staff in Old Town, which has helped the station meet the needs of the community.
Three years ago, there were 14 firefighters assigned there. Today, there are 22 out of 25 staff spaces filled, Plato said.
No timeline was set to discuss the report again, with councillors urging staff to move quickly.