Does Ladue Need Two New Fire Houses?

Does the City of Ladue need two new firehouses?

Depends upon who you ask. Ladue has been a well to do community for all of its 75 years. The business scions of the community nestle in enclaves throughout the community. For most of 75 years, Ladue residents have gotten what they wanted or needed and had the cash to pay for the prizes.

These are new times, and things could get tricky. The much ballyhooed underfunded city employee pension fund has been well documented. City fathers are wrestling with ways to get this self-funded effort more solvent.

At the same time, new and younger homeowners are voicing their interest in connecting the neighborhoods with concrete sidewalks. Need I not mention all of this will cost considerable amounts from the treasury to get these projects done? There is likely not enough money to do everything.

In the past, city officials could snap their collective fingers and pay for necessary, and in some cases unnecessary, projects.

But the walls are starting to close in. Budgets are starting to tighten.

Truth be known, the city firefighters answer about half a dozen fire calls within the boundaries yearly. The bulk of their work is on fighting fires in other communities through mutual aid and running ambulance calls for a steadily aging population.

A thorny little thing like the ISO (International Organizations of Standardization) gets in the way far too often. The ISO sets the standards by which cities must conduct their fire business. Field inspections come about once every 10 years or so. There’s no dealing or negotiating.The ISO rates each city, and if the ratings falter, the insurance rates for homeowners and businesses alike will rise like smoke from the ashes.

Seems like one firehouse for a population of 8,000 would be sufficient. But not so where the city has 23 miles of roads and the firefighters must provide 24-hours-a-day coverage for the stretch of one of the busiest interstates (Highway 40) in Missouri. The existing houses were both built in the 1950s and are far short of current standards.

Later next month, Ladue will host a town hall meeting to let the residents know the who, what, when and where things happen next. Armed with three choices: renovating, rebuilding or consolidating, city council members went the new construction route for two houses on the existing land occupied by the present houses on either end of Clayton Road.

New, modern stations will be bigger, roomier and surely meet those pesky ISO standards for years to come. Squeezed already onto small lots, the new firehouses will have basements excavated to create new space for work out facilities and have lots of extra storage rooms too. Bunk rooms will be more habitable and facilities will be thus, Ladue can contemplate hiring female officers in the future. Fire captains and chiefs will get offices. Cooking and eating areas will be drastically better.

Years ago, smarter people than I proposed a fire merger with the City of Frontenac. That made a whole lot of sense, until the pension problems in Ladue scared Frontenac officials off. Why in the world would Frontenac want to assume any of Ladue’s debt?

As John Schiele, lifelong resident of Ladue and longtime devotee of the finance committee said, “It's time to get off the concepts and down to the reality of what things will really cost.”

Wisely, Schiele advised city officials to have their specific cost figures in mind before standing before the glaring eyes of the public.

Bottom line is, two newly constructed firehouses will cost in the millions. Ladue officials now get to come up with ways to pay for both houses and do the rest of the proposed projects, too. Stay tuned.