Martindale council OKs grant request for new fire station

The Martindale City Council gave a boost to emergency responders on Tuesday when it approved the submission of a grant request for the Martindale Volunteer Fire Department and a request from the Martindale police chief for the purchase of a used patrol vehicle from San Marcos.

Bill Hamilton and Richard Salmon from Emergency Services District #3 and the Martindale Volunteer Fire Department presented information to the council on the fire department’s plans for a new station. Hamilton said the department has received funding and saved up to buy a piece of land.

“What we’re doing now is we’re trying to work toward building a building to put on that land,” Hamilton said. “We’ve way outgrown the building that we’re in now.”

Hamilton said that the department receives about 35 calls a month and has 18 firefighters, all of whom are volunteers. He noted that as Martindale has grown, traffic has increased and the number of medical calls has increased as the population has.

“We have a real active crew,” he said. “We recently acquired a new vehicle. We’re growing, and we’re growing in support of the community. We’re doing a better job with the resources we have, and we need a new home. We have a two-truck station, and we’ve got four vehicles.”

Salmon said the Martindale VFD contacted five or six other volunteer fire departments in the Hill Country that are similar in size and call volume to the Martindale department. They collected ideas and learned best practices and have put together a design team to work on designing the new station.

“We’re also doing an RFP (request for proposal) for a professional services engineer,” Salmon said, within the next couple of weeks. “... Once we have that, we can get the engineer and maybe some contractors to work with us to figure out about what it’s going to cost.”

Salmon said that the department might not be able to get funds from regular Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) allocations, and that CDBG emergency funding would go through the county, not the city. He said the department is looking at other grants and funding sources, such as private foundations and individuals, and is hoping that the CDBG funding requirements will change to accommodate their request.

In talking about one of the other volunteer fire departments they visited, Salmon said, “They have a $2.5, $2.8 million facility. We have a quonset hut.”

The city council voted unanimously to submit the CDBG grant request. 

Martindale Police Chief Harry Juergens also made a request of the city council: a 2012 Chevy Tahoe, that the San Marcos Police Department is selling.

“We need another patrol unit,” Juergens said. “Part of the reason we need another patrol unit is so when we have all hands on deck, we have three vehicles running around and not four or five guys in two vehicles.”

The vehicle SMPD is selling was used as a commander’s vehicle, not a patrol vehicle, Juergens said, and is fully outfitted.

“We put our radio in it, slap stickers on it and go,” Juergens said. “They want $12,000 for this vehicle.”

Juergens said he searched within a 500-mile radius for a comparable vehicle and found three. Two, which had been stripped of equipment, were for sale for $14,000 each, and a third vehicle, which had far more miles on it than the SMPD vehicle, was for sale for $16,000.

The reason SMPD is looking to sell the 2012 Tahoe, Juergens said, is a new initiative for the police department to get rid of any vehicles that are five years old or older.

“This is one of the vehicles that they’re trying to cycle out immediately,” he said.

Martindale does not have funds budgeted for a new police vehicle, but to help offset the cost Juergens said he can sell the one unserviceable vehicle his department has. He said that he had looked for grant funding to help with the purchase, to no avail.

“I look for grants every single day. There’s grant money out there, but not for vehicles,” he said. “I can get a tank, I can get a helicopter, but I can’t get a car.”

Council approved the purchase unanimously.