Fire-safety funding put in hands of voters

Erin Neff

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 1998 | 11:09 a.m.

The fate of the six Las Vegas fire stations now lies in the hands of voters, who will be asked in June to approve a $28.9 million bond issue to fund them.

The City Council on Monday unanimously approved placing the bond on the June 8 municipal general election ballot after city Fire Chief Mario Trevino outlined the citywide need.

In 1990, the city had 1.03 firefighters per 1,000 residents, a rate that has dropped to 0.81 with the city's growth, Trevino said.

Even if the bond passes, the city will have only 0.94 firefighters per 1,000 residents, compared with a national average of 1.5 per 1,000.

"We feel we can achieve safety with 1 per 1,000 due to the fact that Las Vegas is a new city with many new buildings," Trevino said.

If passed, the bond would pay for buildings, equipment and 160 new personnel -- 84 firefighters and 76 paramedics -- to staff five new stations over five years.

Four stations would be added and one replaced. In addition, the money would renovate another station and provide furnishings and apparatus for a station to be donated. Also funded would be six engines, nine rescue units, three ladder trucks and one hazardous-materials unit.

A resident with a home assessed at $100,000 would pay $37.80, or about a dime a day for 20 years, for better fire service, Councilman Arnie Adamsen said.

"This is just a simple case of us not being able to keep up with our growth," Adamsen said.

Roughly 56 percent of the city's budget funds public safety, including $44 million for the fire department, Adamsen said.

Although the majority of the new stations would be in the city's northwest section -- where the bulk of growth has occurred and will continue -- passing the bond would benefit the entire city by improving response time everywhere, Councilman Larry Brown said.

The national target for fire response is six minutes. Fires reach their flashover point -- the point at which a fire gets hot enough to destroy a building -- after six minutes, and in many medical situations, emergency medical response must be within six minutes to prevent permanent brain damage and death.

In 1997, slightly more than half of the city's 52,417 fire responses took more than six minutes. The average time was 7 minutes, 38 seconds -- up 12.6 seconds from 1996.

"You can expect a similar increase this year," Trevino said.

The most recent previous fire bond, a $9 million measure approved in 1992, funded three fire stations, a maintenance shop for equipment and a $750,000 upgrade to the communication system, fire department spokesman Tim Szymanski said.

All four council members agreed they would try to get their constituents behind the bond.

Councilman Gary Reese said Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, who missed Monday's meeting because of other city business, has also pledged her support for the bond.

"If we don't pass this bond, we're only hurting ourselves," Councilman Michael McDonald said. "We can always argue about growth -- who's going to pay for growth -- but this is a bare necessity."

Now the fire department must figure the final bond rate and write the ballot language. Both will require final approval from the mayor and City Council.