Relocating fire station?

5/09 unedited tahoe mt. news

By Kathryn Reed

Scrapping the 1940s era fire station for a modern one and combining it with a fire academy is a dream South Lake Tahoe Fire Chief Lorenzo Gigliotti hopes becomes a reality in 2010.
Station No. 2 across from South Tahoe Middle School is a relic from the days when the facility was part of Lake Valley Fire Department. Its location makes it a nightmare for emergency vehicles to merge into traffic on Highway 50. The conditions are poor. Modernization is near insurmountable. Vehicle storage is a problem. It’s not accessible to the disabled.
Gigliotti is going after a chunk of a $210 million federal grant that would allow the city to build a 16,000-square-foot fire station at Lake Tahoe Community College.
Neither response time nor coverage would be hindered by the move, Gigliotti said.
Besides needing to secure the grant – $15 million would be the most the local project could get – the land needs to be acquired. Late last month, Gigliotti met with Lake Tahoe Unified School District officials about an acre it has.
“We do have a floating acre. It’s deeded,” LTUSD Superintendent Jim Tarwater said. “We are a partner with the city so we are welcome to discuss anything.”
LTCC President Paul Killpatrick told his board April 28 that he wants to bring the floating acre up for discussion. He did not have much knowledge about the acre when the Tahoe Mountain News sought details prior to that meeting.
Board member Roberta Mason confirmed at the meeting that the board had previously discussed the issue and was not warm to the idea of a fire training facility on campus.
The floating acre came about when the college district bought the land from Shell Oil Company and a floating acre was deeded to LTUSD.
“We have floating acre info, agreement and legal description. It starts, ‘Beginning at a cedar post about six feet north of a pine tree thence running in a southerly direction.’ Seriously,” said Steve Morales, LTUSD facilities director.
Despite this description, the college says it has the authority to dictate which acre belongs to the unified district.
Before the meeting, Killpatrick voiced concerns about having a full scale training facility on his campus because of how densely wooded it is.
Virginia Boyar, director of Career and Technical Education at LTCC, believes in theory that combining the college’s fire academy with a city fire station is logical.
“I think it would be a wonderful opportunity, especially if we can have the training grounds there,” Boyar said.
Gigliotti said training for firefighters throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin is getting more difficult because of environmental concerns.
“You can’t just go to the end of the street and blow out water. If we could develop a training site on the college campus, we would certainly alleviate some of the environmental concerns and it supports the existing programs there,” Gigliotti said.
The chief could know by the end of summer if the city is awarded the grant.