ASHLAND – In an emergency situation, every second counts.
That’s why many municipalities spread firefighters and EMTs among multiple stations.
Ashland Fire Department responded to about 4,225 calls in 2016, including calls within the city of Ashland, calls to two nearby townships that contract with the city for services and mutual aid calls to assist other departments.
While the city itself is only about 11 square miles, the department actually covers about 62 square miles, all from just one station located on Cleveland Avenue, near downtown.
Mansfield Fire Department, which covers 30 square miles and responded to 10,562 calls in 2016, has five stations. Wooster Fire Department, which covers 18 square miles and responded to 4,041 calls in 2016, has two.
City officials have long said Ashland needs a second fire station, but recent land and monetary donations could make that vision come true.
Mayor Matt Miller said he recalls the idea of a second fire station being a frequent topic of discussion when he was county commissioner from 2000 through 2008. But now the city is the closest it has ever been to bringing the concept to fruition.
Where would it be?
Last year, University Hospitals Samaritan Medical Center donated a piece of land on the southeast corner of the intersection at Mifflin Avenue and U.S. 42 to the city for the construction of a new satellite fire station. The Samaritan Hospital Foundation also pledged a $300,000 donation to purchase a fire truck for the new station. The gifts came with a caveat that the station must be built within five years.
Fire chief Rick Anderson said he believes having a station on the donated land would cut four minutes off the department’s response times to locations from from Smith Road south to the city limits. The proximity to U.S. 42 may also allow quicker access to portions of U.S. 250 East and to I-71, he said.
Local officials have considered that location a prime spot for a second fire station since at least 2002, when the city hired a private company to perform a strategic study.
The study recommended the city transition gradually to a multi-station configuration, starting with construction of a second station on the southwest side.
Steps two and three of the 2002 plan were to build a third station on the east side of town and then to relocate the existing central station further north, possibly maintaining the current Cleveland Avenue station as a headquarters, training center and storage facility.
A final step, the study suggested, could be to build a fourth station slightly west of the northwest side of town.
Those suggestions were put on the back burner for a number of reasons including administrative changes, budget constraints, the Great Recession and slowed growth in the city.
“They did another study in 2009-2010. Two separate parties did the two studies, but that study too called for a second fire station, and ironically enough, both of those studies identified that Mifflin-42 area as a potential site,” Anderson said.
How would it help?
More recently, Ashland firefighter Drew Marchand wrote a research paper exploring the benefits of a second station as a final project for one of his classes at Bowling Green State University.
For his paper, Marchand used 2016 run volume data and Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping to determine where the department is called most often and to count how many calls the department received from each of the city’s four wards as well as from Montgomery and Milton townships, which contract with Ashland for fire and EMS services.
He also compared response times from the current station and from the proposed new station site to various locations in all four wards and both townships.
Marchand found response times from the second station would be better than response times from the existing station for 12 of the 26 locations tested, including high call volume residential areas and key intersections.
Most dramatically, the second station would shave eight minutes off the response time to Redwood Drive, which is right next to the proposed new station, and six or seven minutes off the response time to certain locations in Milton Township.
First responders could also arrive five minutes quicker to King Ridge Drive, three minutes quicker to Smith Road and one minute quicker to both Brethren Care Village and to Lutheran Village, which both have a high volume of calls because of their senior populations.
How would it be funded?
At current staffing levels and with the equipment it already has, Anderson said, the department could afford to keep four people, one fire engine and one medical service vehicle at the second station.
That would leave about seven crew members at the Cleveland Avenue station, along with three day shift captains who have other duties that prevent them from regularly going out on calls.
The city brings in about $325,000 annually from its contracts with the two townships, and that money is put in a fund that is used to purchase all the city’s fire apparatus and emergency equipment vehicles.
“That’s been a huge plus for us, when I can go to council and say, I need another medic unit to the tune of $200,000 plus, but it’s coming out of that 222 account, it’s a line item and that money’s there,” Anderson said.
The new truck from the Samaritan Foundation would not be an additional truck but a replacement for an existing one that was purchased through that fund, Anderson said.
Anderson said he does not foresee any additional costs for the station, aside from the hard and soft costs of building and maintaining the facility. According to the city’s feasibility study contract with Mull and Weithman Architects, the proposed station would be a “2 1/2 to 3 bay satellite station with associated support, living and administrative spaces.”
Miller and Anderson both said it’s too early to provide an estimated cost for the project or to say how the city would pay for the construction and operating costs.
City residents did pass a new 0.25 percent income tax levy for safety services in 2016. The approximately $1.5 million per year raised through the tax is split between the police and fire departments.
What’s Next?
The city has contracted with Mull and Weithman Architects to assess the community’s needs, analyze the proposed site and come up with a schematic design and a preliminary project budget. This feasibility study costs the city about $20,275.
In the meantime, Anderson said, the fire department is in the process of trying to quadrant the city to get a better feel for where the calls are coming from and to figure out which station would handle which areas if a second station was built.
Miller said he does not have a timeline for when the study will be complete, but once it is, he wants to bring the results to the community to get input of whether and how city residents would like to proceed.
