KILLINGTON — Killington Fire and Rescue is hosting four open houses throughout the month of October, and invites all residents to take a tour of the current facility and learn more about the Department’s current needs and why the Fire Department Facilities Review Committee and Selectboard support building a new fire department.
Every Tuesday through Oct. 27, from 6-7 p.m., members of Killington Fire and Rescue will be offering tours of the station to interested citizens. The station is located at 1973 Killington Road.
As background, over the last two years, the town Selectboard and Fire Department Facilities Review Committee has taken a series of steps to assess the current facilities and make recommendations. Most recently, the Committee (whose members include: Stephen Finneron, Otto Iannantuoni, Vito Rasenas, Andrew Salamon and Andrea Weymouth) determined that: “The current site is inadequate to meet the current needs and future needs of the Killington Fire Station and renovating the existing structure is not cost effective. Our (the committee’s) recommendation is to build a new structure on an alternate site.”
To expand on this, the committee noted in their April report to the Selectboard that the current fire station does not meet state building codes and has to be repaired or rebuilt. The committee believes that since it would cost over $2.5 million just to bring the building to code (without addressing any of the fire department’s needs) and the facility would still partially be on someone else’s land, it doesn’t make sense to invest in the current site. One member summed up the issue, “It would take a lot of money to renovate the old facility, and when we got through, we’d have the same problems: there isn’t enough space inside, and there isn’t enough space outside. We need a new site.”
As a result of these findings, the committee unanimously opined in a Feb. 23, 2015 motion that: “The Town of Killington must allocate funds to assess potential sites. This assessment includes an investigation and a feasibility study for the building of the new fire station. This assessment is required before further committee work can continue.”
The Open House Days at the Fire Station on Killington Rd are designed to invite all voters to visit the station and see firsthand why the town committee believes it needs to invest in a new facility.
For more information, visit www.killingtontown.com/Selectboard/KVFDFacilitiesReviewCommittee
