BRENT BEAN II
WESTFIELD – The City Council voted last week to approve two appropriations totaling $245,000 for the design of an addition to the Little River Fire Substation which will improve emergency response times in the city’s southeast quadrant.
The Council approved the use of $122,500 from the city’s free cash account and an appropriation of $122,500 from the Fire Department’s ambulance reserve account to fund the architectural design and bid document preparation.
At-large Councilor Brent B. Bean II, who is Finance Committee chairman, said the project has been under development since 2001 because the current facility does not support a larger deployment of firefighters/paramedics.
“The Ward 5 area of the city needs to be served better,” Bean said this morning. “Right now when those two firefighters/paramedics are out on a call, the station is closed. We’re not using it properly.”
DANIEL M. KNAPIK
“Westfield has the second largest land mass in the state, so the two substations, Little River and Southampton Road, are very important when it comes to fire and EMS (emergency medical services) response,” Bean said. “This will provide the design and architectural drawings, the construction documents, needed to out the project out to bid.”
Bean said that the original Little River substation expansion was estimated at $450,000, but that inflation and expansion of the proposed addition have increase the project cost.
“It includes a storage facility, to be shared by police and fire, that was not part of the original project,” Bean said.
The project will also expand the facility to reflect personnel changes in the Fire Department where there are more women firefighters/paramedics than a decade ago. The current substation has no separate facilities for female firefighters/paramedics.
The expansion will also enable the department to assign more firefighters in that location.
“It’s unacceptable to have a substation with only two firefighters, so that you have to close the substation while the firefighters are out responding to a call,” Bean said. “The Little River area is a heavily structured and populated area of the city, so this expansion helps with response times.”
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said the substation expansion could start in 2016 construction season.
“Looking at the funding sources, about three-quarters of the cost will come out of ambulance receipts and we have $500,000 left in the bond premium that has to be used for capital improvements, so construction could start in the summer of 2016,” Knapik said.
“The call volume in that area of the city has supported this expansion,” Knapik said. That area of the city has exploded over the last 20 years.”
