Acknowledging there is no perfect compromise to be found, members of the Arlington County Board's Fire Station #8 Task Force plan to recommend that the current station be torn down and a new one built in its place.
On an 8-2 vote, with two abstentions, members of the task force on May 12 rejected the county government’s proposed relocation of the station to Old Dominion Drive and 26th Street North in favor of keeping it on Lee Highway in the Hall’s Hill neighborhood.
The recommendation, slated to go to County Board members by the end of the month, proposes a modern, four-bay structure to replace the 1960s-era two-bay facility. The cost – when the need for a temporary facility during construction is factored in – would be in the range of $19 million, well above the $14.1 figure discussed by county officials in the past.
Whether elected officials will go along with the proposal remains to be seen.
“This is a very, very difficult decision for the County Board – a balancing act,” said Christopher Essig, who represents the Emergency Preparedness Advisory Commission on the task force.
In a meeting that stretched three hours rather than its planned two, and exposed frayed nerves on all sides, a majority of task-force members concluded that the benefit of reduced response times in the far northern portions of the county that would accrue by moving the fire station to Old Dominion would be offset by a decline in service times to the Lee Highway corridor.
A draft report, compiled by task force chairman Noah Simon and gone over meticulously by the panel, concludes that the county government “should not focus on producing ‘equal’ service to outlying areas where demand is low at the expense of service in high-demand, heavily-populated areas.”