Medina County ESD 2 Board members Todd Summers, Phillip Fitch, Todd McGuiart, and Brenda Summers discussed the next steps in the process of building a new fire station in the meeting held last Tuesday, May 16 at 6:30 pm.
Board member John Barron was absent.
New fire station progress
Raul Garcia of Garcia & Wright Consulting Engineers, Inc., addressed the Board on the progress being made towards the construction of a new fire station.
Summers said Requests for Qualifications had been sent out to 10 construction companies. RFQs were returned by F.A. Nunnelly Company, Alpha Building Construction, Middleman Construction Company, and Callahan & Freeman Architects.
Summers said that locally, only Carl Patteson showed any interest in the project, and that ultimately Patteson had too much on his plate to take on the project.
The Board will score the RFQs, then decide which companies to invite for an in-person interview. The companies will be scored again after the interviews, and the Board will then choose who to work with and begin negotiations.
Garcia estimated that if the Board chose a company within the next 30 days, construction could begin between the next 90 to 120 days.
“I still believe that a new fire house is going to go a long way to helping [Devine VFD] to be able to recruit people, to make it easier to get people to be around at night and things like that when we need them,” Summers said. “It should open up a lot of doors.”
Treasurer’s Report
Nancy Pepper delivered the Treasurer’s report.
“During April we had about $10,000 come in in the maintenance and operations taxes,” Pepper said, “and about $1,500 for the delinquent, which puts us in a pretty good position. We only have about seven, almost eight percent of our taxes left to collect by the end of September.”
Pepper said that year-to-date, the ESD was $215,000 over expenses.
“We will need to be starting to look at the budget before we know it,” Pepper said.
Fill the Boot fundraiser
Devine VFD members recently raised over $2,000 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association through the Fill the Boot program.
“We just wanted to say thank you so much to the individuals of the fire department and to your Emergency Service District for allowing them to participate in this program,” said Margaret Adams of the MDA, who had traveled from San Antonio to address the firefighters and Board. “It truly means a lot.”
The next Regular meeting was set for Tuesday, June 20 at 6:30 pm.
By Marly Davis
Staff Writer