The Garden City Park Fire and Water District is moving ahead with planning a new firehouse despite residents voting against a bond to replace the fire station on Denton Avenue last year.
The bond, which was $5.9 million, was voted down by 251, or 77% out of the 325 total votes in Sept. 19, 2023. The district has been looking to renovate or reconstruct the firehouse, which was built in the 1970s, since 2007. Robert Mirabile, co-commissioner of the district, said that since then, the district has been putting money aside to save for renovations.
“They were putting money away and once we would get close to saying, ‘we probably might have enough to build, let’s save another year’ and then we start to get hit with Covid and inflation and supply chain issues drove the price up tremendously,” Mirabile said.
Mirabile said the commissioners wanted to get this project done last year before losing even more money. He said the district didn’t have enough money to do the project that the department initially wanted so they had to put up a bond vote.
Mirabile said that with the bond being voted down, the department now has to determine whether it can design an adequate firehouse with the money it has at hand.
“What we’re exploring now is trying to design a firehouse that will fit the needs of the department and also fit the budget that we have so there can’t be any tax increase,” Mirabile said.
The budget for this project has yet to be determined as the district is currently reviewing preliminary plans with architects and engineers. After the plan is approved, it will go to a third-party cost estimator. He said if the budget comes in too high, then changes will need to be made, but that is something he said he is uncertain about until the plans are finalized.
“We’d like the firehouse to be adequate-sized to house the three companies that turn out of that firehouse,” Mirabile said. “There’s five companies within the department. Two of them are at headquarters, three of them are at station two.”
Mirabile said he wants this new firehouse to have a place where the firemen can relax in between calls called a Day Room, a room for meetings and a room for training. He also said he wants the new firehouse to be built to current safety standards, which he said station No. 2 is currently not.
“The turnout gear the firemen wear need to be stored in a separate room from where the guys are to make it a room so that any contaminates from the gear don’t affect the people in the house,” Mirabile said. “So that’s an important aspect of a new building.”
Mirabile said he would like to see the new building be more handicap-accessible with an elevator that the current building does not have.
Also, Mirabile said the new building should have backup power since right now the building only has temporary backup power on a trailer in the parking lot. He said this is because the infrastructure in the building over the years has decayed to the point where it can’t be fixed or replaced.
He said he would like to have “a current HVAC system that would filter the air properly and it’ll be a lot more efficient than the 50-year-old units that we’re currently dealing with.”
Mirabile said he wants the building to look nice for the neighbors and not encroach on them in any negative way. He said he wants the building to be inviting so that new people in the neighborhood would want to join the department.
Every year, the Board of Commissioners would put money away for either renovating or constructing a new firehouse, according to Mirabile. He said there is a department-wide committee of representation from each fire company within the fire department that sent out questionnaires to the members throughout the years, asking whether a new building or a renovation of the current building would be best.
“What the members were asking for in regards to the renovation of the firehouse caused the board to reach out and hire a firm of architecture and engineers to look into the feasibility of renovating the firehouse back in 2015,” Mirabile said.
Mirabile said the engineers and architects determined that it was cost-prohibitive to renovate the firehouse. They said new construction would require less money and the building would be “more efficient.”
“When you’re talking about a commercial building like this, the engineers investigated over and over and they said that not only will it (reconstructing the house) be more cost-effective, it will streamline the process and you will get it done faster because when the houses are being rebuilt, we have to temporarily relocate and that creates a disturbance,” Mirabile said. “By putting a new structure in, you actually do it faster than if you would renovate.”
Frank Carnevale, former member of the fire department, said this money should be set aside to possibly pay daytime firefighters. He said the money can also be used to build up the current force, which, according to him, is struggling to stay afloat due to lack of volunteers.
“Neighboring departments such as New Hyde Park and Mineola have been assisting the Garden City Fire Department with their calls,” Carnevale said.
Mirabile said Garden City Park has mutual agreements with neighboring departments, depending on the type of call they receive. He said the department automatically sends the alert to neighboring departments to ensure they have adequate manpower at the scene. He said Garden City has the same agreement where if they have a certain type of alarm in a certain area, they automatically call Garden City Park’s fire department.
“That’s something that every department has in their procedures, which they call mutual aid procedures to make sure you have adequate coverage when you have an alarm,” Mirabile said.
Since the bond vote failed, Mirabile said the commissioners are working to resign the house to fit the current budget. The design is still being revised before it gets sent to the cost-estimator.
