Plans for a new $2 million Minocqua fire station are moving forward after the town board Tuesday, May 17th unanimously approved the $180,000 contract with MSA Professional Services to design the 15,000-squre-foot building.
Town officials will ask the electorate at the annual meeting in November for permission to construct the fire station, which will replace the downtown facility. The electorate last year approved $327,000 to purchase land for the station. Design work should be finished by this December. If approved by the townspeople, bid letting will be next January, with awarding of bids in February and construction starting March or April and completed by that October.
Supervisor Billy Fried said while he supports the new fire station, he was unsure if he had sufficient information to vote to approve the design contact with MSA, which has an office in Rhinelander. He also asked if the contract should go to the town attorney for review. Fellow board members replied that Public Works Director Mark Pertile has a good background in such contracts and had already made contract changes with the architects. The board did not deem it necessary to have the town attorney review it. Fried also asked if the town should have bid out the architectural design contract. Pertile said it was not required, however, they had interviewed two other architectural firms before deciding upon MSA.
Fire Chief Andy Petrowski reminded Fried that Becher Hoppe, an engineering and architectural firm in Wausau, had done a $7,500 feasibility study in 2014 that reviewed the space needs for the new station. MSA will review that data to arrive at its own conclusions before design work begins, Petrowski said. If for some reason the town did not go through with the fire station, MSA would be paid for work completed plus 10 percent of the remaining contract fee. Petrowski said it would compensate the firm also for “scheduling conflict” in so much as the firm may have turned down work in expectation of finishing the Minocqua contract.
But that may not be an issue as former town chairman Don Gauger noted: “They (the electorate) wouldn’t have bought the land (otherwise).”
The 58-7 vote last October came at a special town meeting. Gauger is a member of the fire station committee. “We need this thing, it’s going to last us 50 years,” he said. Brought up by Fried, the concept of a fire district in which neighboring towns pool fire protection resources, the fire chief had this to say: “The biggest savings for fire districts is wages . . . not big savings in equipment or fire stations.” “Because we are all volunteers, the savings is not what people that think they are,” he said.
The Minocqua Fire Department serves the entire township, an area of 170 square miles. Volunteers also staff fire station #2 in the Bo-Di-Lac area.
