MFD apparatus bay move will improve response times

Maricopa Fire Department’s Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with Goodyear is over at the end of this fiscal year, but the relocation of the apparatus bay to the Fire Administration Complex is still on hold.

The City Council, at its April 19 meeting, tabled a recent amendment to conditional use permit 10-02 due to MFD needing more time to evaluate alternative placement of the apparatus bay on the property.

The IGA with Goodyear will end on June 30. Moving the engine company, currently housed there, would improve response times and coverage in Maricopa.

Currently, the department has two brick and mortar stations serving the city, Station 571 on Porter Road and Station 574 on Alterra Road, along with the company located at the Goodyear station.

“City council decided that they didn’t want to continue the fire services agreement with Goodyear,” said Maricopa Fire Chief Wade Brannon. “It (the contract) ends at the end of this fiscal year, and we are moving that engine company into town.”

An engine company is made up of one truck and four firefighters.

During the April 5 meeting, the department presented the city council with the plan of moving the metal apparatus bay to the fire administration buildings at 44624 W. Garvey Rd., which would cost $26,165. That sum would come out of the General Fund and be moved to Fire Department Support Services, buildings account, according to the staff report presented by MFD.

The breakdown of costs will be $19,565 on the teardown and relocation of the apparatus bay, $700 to relocate a storage container currently on the property and $900 to move the concrete barricades outside of the buildings. The other $5,000 will be made up of improvements to the landscaping and building repairs, phone line installation and data cabling.

With the company moving back into the city, response times will be faster, according to Brannon.

“We have performance measures that we are trying to meet,” Brannon said. “They measure how well we are able to get to properties, and there are parts of town in this business corridor, especially in Cobblestone and the northern part of Rancho El Dorado, that are difficult to get to from our current station locations.

“We can’t meet our time to get to those particular areas. This is the lowest cost alternative to put them here in an existing building that is relatively close to what we need.”

With the apparatus bay located at Garvey Road, the department will be able to stay within its performance time of responding to a call in four minutes.

The apparatus bay that would move to the Garvey Road location is currently at the corner of Bowlin and White & Parker Roads.

When Goodyear annexed a 67-square-mile parcel of the Sonoran Valley area in 2007, the department moved the company that was located there to the Goodyear fire station to help cover that area. That two-year IGA agreement was originally signed in April 2009.

“I’m personally really excited that we are getting to the point of improving service,” said Brannon about the move. “Once we get this company back into town, it will improve service with those areas that we’ve had some problems with over the years.”