Council Approves $150K for Fire Station 3

The City Council voted 6-3 to provide the $150,000 the Fire Department needed to reopen Fire Station 3 at City Hall on Monday night after dozens of city residents spoke in favor of the request at a public hearing.

After nearly three hours of public comment and debate, the council achieved the two-thirds majority vote required by the City Charter to approve the funding. Station 3 had been closed since Jan. 2. Now it will reopen and the engine and ambulance housed there will be fully staffed.

City Councilors Ken Smith, Chris Dwyer, Esther Kennedy, Nancy Novelline Clayburgh, Anthony Coviello and Assistant Mayor Robert Lister voted in favor of the motion. Mayor Eric Spear and City Councilors Brad Lown and Jack Thorsen voted against it.

At the beginning of the public hearing, LeClaire told councilors the loss of Station 3 has increased response times city wide. “The longer the response time, the worse the expected outcome,” he said.

He told the council that with the supplemental appropriation, the Fire Department could keep the station open this year and next year.

“It is about public safety and it is about a policy decision by the City Council. Will we have three fire stations or two?” LeClaire said.

“How much is a life worth?” is where LeClaire said the debate surrounding Station 3 needs to be refocused.

Nearly all of the city residents who spoke in favor of the supplemental appropriation cited the need for increased public safety.

“Possession and money can be replaced, but people cannot be replaced,” said Laura Griswold, who lives on Buckminster Way.

Mark Brighton, president of the Association of Portsmouth Taxpayers, and other members of his group spoke against the Fire Department funding because of the difficult economic climate and the prospect of a potential property tax increase.

He challenged those who spoke in favor of keeping Fire Station 3 open to “tell me what departments you want to cut.”

“We can’t have it all, we just can’t,” he said.

Brighton also criticized the Fire Department for “scaring the bejesus out of people” by saying people will die if they can’t reopen Station 3.

But several city residents, Pease International Tradeport officials and Portsmouth Regional Hospital staff members did say it is a matter of life and death.

Shelley Vetter, executive director of the Discovery Child Enrichment Center at Pease International Tradeport, said the closure of Fire Station 3 affected them when they had a call. The children were out of the building on a cold day after smoke filled the building because of a toaster.

“It was a long 13 minutes,” she said, before the Fire Department was able to respond. “It concerns me that what happens when I have one of the 150 children there in distress.”

Jennifer Matthes, the president of the Tenants Association at Pease, said the companies contribute $5.6 million a year to the City of Portsmouth. She said the closure of Station 3 will lead to higher insurance rates for companies and it will discourage others from wanting to come to Pease.

Grant Turpin, the EMS coordinator at Portsmouth Regional Hospital, also urged the council to reopen Station 3. “Those first two to four minutes are the only chance you are going to have” to survive an emergency such as cardiac arrest, he said.

Following the public hearing, Lister made a motion to approve the supplemental appropriation. “I don’t want to compromise the safety of anyone in the City of Portsmouth.”

“The fact that any one person in this city could get hurt for $150,000 would be a tragedy,” said City Councilor Ken Smith before he voted in favor of the motion.

City Councilor Anthony Coviello said he would also support the funding, but “I want us to be honest about it and have a real adult conversation about it.”

Coviello said the City Council would end up raising taxes through an indirect 15 percent water and sewer increase and he said many of the people who spoke in favor of the appropriation would see their taxes go up.

Coviello said he would support the supplemental appropriation because Fire Chief LeClaire said he could keep the budget in line next year, but he is still concerned about what will happen in fiscal year 2015.

City Councilor Brad Lown said he would not support the motion because they are in the middle of a budget year “and this is not the way this should be done.”

He said it would also be a bad precedent to take money from the undesignated fund balance because it is a recurring expense.

“There is no way to eliminate that risk,” even if the fire department was tripled from the $6.8 million it has received the past few years.

City Councilor Jack Thorsen said he would oppose the motion “because the money is coming from the wrong place.”

Mayor Eric Spear said that as much he wants to see Station 3 open, the supplemental appropriation will not solve the problem.

He said that while public safety is important priority in the city in order to maintain it at the level that people want, the council would have to cut other city services such as the indoor pool or the library’s weekend hours to the point where very little services would remain. 

Novelline Clayburgh asserted that the city could still save a great deal of money by renegotiating union contracts in 2014 for new hires. She also said the Fire Department has generated $140,000 in revenue by providing ambulance service to Greenland and New Castle and another $18,000 when some firefighters switched to Matthew Thornton health insurance.

LeClaire reiterated his request for a supplemental appropriation of $150,000 instead of receiving the money through the city's contingency fund. When the council finally voted 6-3 to approve that motion, it was greeted with thunderous applause.

"It's what the residents wanted. It's what the people who work here want," LeClaire said. "We're happy that our community still values what the Fire Department does."