The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Money in the bank but no place to use it…
[ By Mark Reaman ]
While the bank account balance certainly looks healthy given voter approval of a multi-million-dollar bond issue last November, circumstances topped by no definitive place to locate a facility has delayed any immediate plans to build a new fire station and search-and-rescue facility for the Crested Butte Fire Protection District in the North Valley.
The bond money, approximately $29 million, is sitting in the bank. Some of it has been spent on design work for the originally proposed fire station building along with the acquisition of 1.8-acres of land from Spann Ranches adjacent to the town that would have been needed to accommodate the large safety campus even with the town’s 1.55 acres that was initially planned to be the location of the new buildings.
The Fire District had expected construction to have been started by now on property owned by the town of Crested Butte in the Slate River subdivision located along Highway 135 north of the Gas Café. But issues that arose between the town and CBFPD over building standards resulted in the fire district withdrawing from its Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the town last May to provide the needed land for the proposed 30,000-square foot fire hall, the 10,000-square-foot search-and-rescue building and four workforce housing units on the proposed campus. The Fire District has had conversations with representatives of the Spann Ranches to purchase more of the ranch-owned acreage along Highway 135 to possibly locate the entire campus on that site, but no deal has been completed. The total Spann parcel is 7.8 acres and is located on both sides of the Slate River.
CBFPD chief executive officer Sean Caffrey said that while, “the pace is slower than we would have hoped, we take some comfort in the fact we are missing out on a very volatile construction market.”
Given the current situation, Caffrey said the expectation is now to have the new facilities built somewhere in the North Valley within the next five years. “We remain obligated to spend it as the voters approved on land acquisition, a fire station, a SAR facility, housing and possibly a training facility,” he said last week. “Progress is slower now that we aren’t using the land we intended to use originally. Changes in construction pricing may further reduce the scope of the project and/or individual buildings, however we don’t have a good handle on that yet as we’re holding off on redesign costs until we have the site(s) nailed down. I’m still optimistic we’ll be able to deliver the project within five years and we are very interested in delivering these new public facilities as soon as we can.”
In the meantime, the CBFPD closed on the general obligation offering in late January and has about $29 million on hand for the project. The district is obligated to pay off the remaining $25 million in bonds over 25 years. “The taxes to support the bond payments have been levied and are payable twice a year,” explained Caffrey in an email. “Those payments are about $1.7M annually. We have spent a little less than $1M so far on previous design work and land acquisition. Some of that spending pre-dates the bond and was paid via our general fund. We are also making some interest on the bond money, about $108,000 so far, which is being managed by a third party that specializes in municipal funds management.”
Caffrey said one direction being focused on by the board is to proceed with new housing for district employees. “We are now looking at providing member housing at a separate site from the fire station and search-and-rescue facilities,” said Caffrey. “The board is interested in delivering housing sooner, if possible, as it is less complicated and requires less space than the fire and SAR facilities.”
