RACQUEL MUNCY
Skagit Valley Herald, Mount Vernon, Wash.
(TNS)
MOUNT VERNON — The Mount Vernon Fire Department hosted a ribbon cutting and open house Saturday at its newly remodeled LaVenture Road station.
The fire station is at 1901 N. LaVenture Road, across the street from Skagit Valley College.
Fire Chief Bryan Brice said the remodel included creating more work space, health and safety improvements, and making the building seismically stable.
“We had outgrown the space,” Brice said of the building prior to the remodel.
He said there were not enough offices for the administration team that works out of the building, let alone enough space for firefighters to train or fill out reports.
Health and safety improvements have included creating a decontamination chamber and showers for the firefighters to use before going into the office or living spaces.
It also included creating a storage space for bunker gear, so the gear was not sitting right by the exhaust of the diesel engines.
Assistant Fire Chief Bryan Harris said his favorite improvement is the fire station doors. Rather than the typical roll-up garage door, the station now features folding doors with red frames.
The new doors not only look nice, but will be easy to maintain and are easy to open in case of a power outage.
The LaVenture Road station remodel is one of two completed on Mount Vernon fire stations. The Division Street station had a remodel completed in September 2023.
Both remodels were funded with a $12.5 million bond the Mount Vernon City Council approved in 2022.
Brice the bond is being paid back with reimbursements for ambulance transportation of Medicaid patients.
Brice said the city receives about $900,000 a year from those reimbursements.
With the LaVenture Road and Division Street stations remodels completed, the city now turns its attention to the downtown station.
Harris this past year the City Council directed the department to move forward on getting a new design, scope of work and cost estimate for building a new downtown station.
The department is in the midst of working with a contractor to gather the information, and from there Harris said it will be up to the City Council whether to move forward.
In 2019, the city asked voters to pass a $30 million bond for work on the three stations, including replacing the downtown station, but the ballot measure failed.
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