The budget to expand the Crossfield Fire Hall has received an additional $240,000 of funding after Town council approved the money be allocated from the 2015 surplus reserves at the Feb. 16 council meeting.
Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Ken Bosman said the project was initially budgeted for $761,000 in 2014, but with the Canadian dollar down – currently 0.73 to the U.S. dollar – the cost of the expansion has increased.
“The price tends to float with the American dollar and that really hurt us,” he said. “It’s an unusual thing here to go over budget.”
With the construction of four more vehicle bays and additional office space, the 465-square-metre expansion would essentially double the size of the current fire hall when completed, Bosman said.
The existing structure will also be completely recladded, reroofed and renovated so the building will be visually consistent.
“From an appearance point of view, it will look like a brand new building from stem to stern,” Bosman said.
Proceeding under the assumption Alberta Health Services (AHS) will eventually station an ambulance in Crossfield, Bosman said council has made provisions that one of the eight vehicle bays be dedicated for that purpose.
When a population centre exceeds 3,000, there are service standards that AHS is legislatively required to meet for rural municipalities, Bosman said. He added, unless an ambulance is housed in Crossfield there would be “absolutely no way they can hit those targets.”
“The first 10 minutes (of a medical emergency) are critical,” he said. “With the current standards, if someone is having a very major heart attack (in Crossfield), by the time the ambulance is here they are already dead.”
The final architectural drawings of the new fire hall are expected in two to three weeks and Bosman anticipates to be breaking ground with excavating and foundation work by the end of March.
As the Town had more emergency vehicles than the current fire hall could hold, the expansion is helping to support the current need of Crossfield, but Bosman said this was designed with growth in mind.
When the municipality reaches a population of 5,000, it will assume responsibility of policing and long-term provisions have been roughed out for the fire hall to accommodate when Crossfield reaches that milestone.
“Roughly half of it is catching up and the other half of it is planning for the future,” he said.
