Palmyra Fire Station Approved

By DOUG DONNELLY

PALMYRA – After years of studying, planning and wishful thinking, Palmyra Township is getting a new fire station.

The township board approved a contract last week with Papenhagen Construction to build an $850,000 fire station on township-owned property to the west of the township hall.

“I’m pretty excited,” said Fire Chief Paul Rohlan. “It’s been a really long time coming. A couple of our guys thought they’d never see this happen.”

The township has been studying what it would take to build a new station for well over a decade. Voters approved two millages, one for operations and one for buildings and equipment. Money from both of those millages has been set aside, along with some township general fund money, to pay for Phase I of the fire station.

“The supervisor (David Pixley) has worked his tail off to make this happen,” Rohlan said. “All of the board, really. We’re grateful. We see this as a need.”

Pixley said no new township dollars are needed for this phase of the building.

 “This is coming out of money we already have,” he said. “We’ve been saving. We can build it with what we have.”

The current fire station on Rouget Rd. just south of US-223 was built in the 1940s. There are several issues with the building, Supervisor Pixley said.

For one, the station only has three overhead doors and those are too small for most equipment. The station lacks handicapped accessible restrooms and needs a well. There is also a safety concern with fire trucks pulling in and out of the station.

“When trucks back up on Rouget Rd., it can be hard to get in and out of the station,” Pixley said. “We’ve had to bring our ambulance out and go all the way around just to get out to 223.”

“We sat down and looked at all of the changes we would have to make to make it useable,” Pixley said. “If you put a half million dollars into an old building, what do you have? We still would have issues with getting trucks in and out.”

The township has put off replacing one of its old fire trucks because any new vehicle would have to be custom built to fit inside the existing doors.

“We have a few guys who don’t like backing the trucks in because you don’t have very much room,” Rohlan said. “I think at some point, we’ve all hit a mirror or something. I certainly have. It will put some guys at ease a little bit.”

Groundbreaking is likely to be held in March, when weather permits. The building will be 60-feet by 100-feet in size and located about 16 feet from the township hall, which is a former school building.

It will have four overhead doors, large enough to accommodate current and future fire trucks and ambulances. It will also have a radio room and a room to house medical equipment and supplies. The offices for the fire department will be inside the township hall. 

“When we started this five years ago, we were at $1.6 million. That’s when COVID was going on and building supplies were through the roof. Things have come down a little bit.”

Township officials have also pared down the building from earlier proposals. 

Palmyra Township has 17 volunteer fire department members. While volunteer, they do receive a stipend for making calls. The township has averaged anywhere from 280 to 320 calls a year, although this year that number is down to about 250 so far.

Several years ago the township thought it had secured funds from the state to pay for a new station, but those plans never came to fruition. 

Pixley already has plans for a second phase. That would connect the new fire station to the township hall with a breezeway, allowing the building to be opened up for a warming center and in cases of emergency, per the Red Cross. Phase two also includes money for upgrading the parking areas. Pixley used federal COVID funds a couple of years ago to install a backup generator to the building already. 

“I did a lot of planning over the last five years to figure out how to accomplish this,” Pixley said. “It took a lot.”

Rohlan has been chief for 15 years. He said he won’t stop smiling about the news anytime soon.

“It’s been on my mind a lot,” Rohlan said of the new station. “The guys are so excited. They are talking about things we can do. You can see that morale has been lifted. That’s a good thing. People were really looking for this. Other than safety reasons, for morale reasons, we kind of needed it.”