Admire needs a building to house its fire equipment and it needs one soon.
During Wednesday’s Lyon County Commission meeting, Richard Gould, fire chief of Lyon County Fire District No. 2, told commissioners that the district’s inventory has gone from $30,000 to about a half million dollars.
“When you’re talking about a half a million dollars in inventory, you have to have a place to put it,” Gould said.
Some of the equipment is being housed in Allen, including a tanker and a new fire truck.
Having the equipment stored in Allen is inconvenient, to say the least.
“Right now we’re having to go to Allen to get a truck and that’s delaying response time,” Gould said. “We’re hoping we can put a building up in Admire that will be able to house our equipment to help our response times.”
Gould said it would take $175,000 in bonds to build the new building, which can be used as a multi-purpose building. Not only can it house trucks, but it also can be used to educate the public, Gould said.
“The community can use the building,” he said. “We can teach CPR classes ... any classes we want to. Right now we don’t have any of those facilities to do any of that.”
Gould said the building in Allen was built in the 1960s. It won’t be abandoned and some equipment still will be stored there.
Also during Wednesday’s commission meeting, Lyon County Attorney Marc Goodman presented three purchase requests in the amount of $29,400 payable from the diversion fund. One request is for $15,000 for the Emporia State University Police Department. ESU PD’s equipment was purchased from KU’s police department, Goodman said.
“Their vehicles don’t even have cameras,” Goodman told commissioners. “They’re back in the dark ages. So I said OK ... the university certainty doesn’t have the funds to buy anything for them. It’s just not there.”
Goodman also asked for $13,000 so the Emporia Police Department can update some of their equipment. Goodman said some of the cameras and hidden microphones the Emporia Police Department uses either aren’t working at all or work poorly.
“Their equipment budget is zilch,” Goodman said. “They don’t have the money for it.”
The smallest request was $1,400 for purchase of body armor and carriers for the Hostage Negotiation Team for the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office.
Goodman said he recognizes the total request from the diversion fund was about $30,000.
“But the fund is somewhere around $150,000,” he said. “We’re certainty not going to hurt it.”
Commissioners put the items on today’s consent agenda for approval.