Voters approve fire station bond
Evergreen voters passed a $4.4 million bond-issue request to fund a new Evergreen fire station.
The tally was 1,410 yes votes and 871 no votes, with ballots mailed out three weeks ago and accepted up to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
"Absolutely fantastic. I'm on Cloud Nine," said Evergreen Fire Chief Craig Williams, who was so nervous the last few days that his wife got tired of his pacing Tuesday and kicked him out of the house.
The construction work will take place from March through October 2009.
The Evergreen Fire Department is overhauling its main station because it is old, cramped and doesn't meet the department's needs.
The department has two stations - the staffed, 51-year-old, 6,500-square-foot main station on U.S. 2 and a small unstaffed one on Birch Grove Road. The main station also has a 1,216-square-foot trailer that serves as a bunkhouse.
The proposed new main station - which will be built on the site of the current firehouse - will be 17,000 square feet.
It will have a bunk room, more training areas, more room for vehicles and larger garage doors to enable the department to buy standard-sized vehicles, plus a community room able to hold 70 people.
A home with an assessed taxable market value of $100,000 will pay $67.99 a year, and a home assessed at $200,000 will pay $135.98 a year. A home assessed at $75,000 will pay $50.99 annually.
The fire department said the 2007 assessed taxable market value of a typical central Evergreen home ranges from $50,000 to $80,000. Homes in Hillcrest and Mission Village usually run from $85,000 to $125,000. North of Rose Crossing, the homes' assessed taxable market values range from $50,000 to $200,000.
Assessed taxable market values are government calculations and are not the private sector's appraised values or sales prices.
The Evergreen department has seen a huge increase in calls in the past few years:
. 454 calls in 2004, its first year to respond to both fire and emergency medical calls. The split was 180 fire calls and 274 medical calls.
. 529 calls in 2005 (204 fire and 325 medical calls).
. 687 calls in 2006 (215 fire and 472 medical calls).
. 903 calls in 2007 (225 fire and 678 medical calls).
In other words, the number of calls has doubled in the past four years.
For the first seven months of 2008, Evergreen has had 789 fire and medical calls.
The Evergreen district began 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week ambulance coverage last October, with two basic-life-support-level emergency medical technicians always on duty. The Evergreen, Big Mountain and Kalispell fire departments currently are the only ones in the valley in which the main stations are staffed all the time. Whitefish will go with 24/7 emergency services early next year.
Right now, the main Evergreen firehouse does not comply with building codes. It has no showers or sleeping quarters. The floor in the truck bay is sinking about one-half inch each year.
The Evergreen Fire District covers 24 square miles of the Evergreen area, which holds about 9,000 people.