A plaque will recognize Tamlyn at the new station site, located along West Central Avenue and the corner of Lovingly Street.

“There’s a lot of politics in all of this, as there is in everything we do. But the bottom line is, it’s about what is the best thing for the citizens of the region. Not just in Emmet County, but in Cheboygan County, it reaches across the bridge and touches in Mackinac County. What is the best for our region? And we think we’ve got it,” Tamlyn said.

Emmet County officials said that the decision to name the facility was made administratively.

With the Mackinaw City facility now complete, the county-run ambulance service has two of its three planned stations in operation.

The first building was opened on M-119 near Harbor Springs. The Mackinaw City station has the capacity to hold three ambulance vehicles and four sleeping quarters for crews to rest during their 24-hour shifts.

It was also completed within its $1.3 million budget, with a cost of a little less than $1.2 million.

A new fire engine now graces one of the bays at the Corning Volunteer Fire Department, and soon a new 911 dispatch center will help the department better serve the city's residents.

On Friday, Shane Weissman of Shane's Autographics was at the department placing decals on the new-to-the-department fire engine that was purchased with volunteer firefighters budget funds.

The new fire engine replaces the department's old 1978 city-owned engine that was failing and had an excess number of miles on it.

Spannaus said the new engine still has a lot of good years on it and will be used to respond to city emergency calls and for out-of-city strike team assignments.

The engine joins the department's fleet of one ladder truck, one rescue squad, three fire engines, and one brush engine used to fight wildfires.

"The volunteer firefighters are excited about the purchase," Spannaus said. "As they are about the upcoming new dispatch upgrade. Their enthusiasm has been rekindled with the city voters' approval of Measure A. We are all very appr ciative of the passage of that measure and of the voters' support of the department."

This Freightliner model is needed to bring the water to the fire scene.“The city of Taunton has hydrants. We don’t have any hydrants,” said Berkley Fire Chief Scott Fournier.The second fire truck is a late 1980-model refurbished fire engine. Its purchase price came in at $100,000.It would have cost another $300,000 to $400,000 to buy a new engine truck.“We didn’t think that was the best bang for the buck,” Fournier said.

The truck can hold 3,000 gallons of water.

It's the largest one at the airport fire station and the only one equipped with a snozzle - a tool that firefighters push into burning aircraft to shoot water inside.

But the government considers it to be at the end of its useful life, so it's being sold.

The airport's deputy director says even without it, the airport has enough firefighting capability.

“It's totally determined based on the size of the airplane that operates here at least five times a day and the length of that airplane,” TIA spokesperson Alexis Higgins said.

The airport, and ultimately taxpayers and passengers, pay the cost of fire protection on the airport grounds, so any savings in equipment and people eventually makes the airport more competitive.