Date: June 9, 1998
From: Fire Department Organizing Committee (Rick Dove, Chairman)

Subject: Fire House Architectural and Construction Planning - Meeting Announcements:
1) Information and Input on fire house plans - Thursday, July 2, 5:30pm
2) Presentation and community selection of alternative plans - Saturday, July 11, 2:00pm
Both meetings will be held at the Dove’s barn, 2051 Lower Lama Road.

Construction of a Fire House must begin in August to beat the winter - which means serious planning is underway already. If you want to hear about construction goals and alternatives, offer suggestions for planning consideration, or offer personal services, the opportunity to do that is on July 2.

July 2 is an informational and input meeting. No decisions will be made at this meeting. We expect to have a consulting architect present to offer advice and knowledge. As a minimum, two rough concepts will be presented - one for a single combined fire-house-community-center building and another for two separate buildings. Each has advantages and compromises. Our biggest dilemmas are created by high desires and low budgets. If you can’t make the July 2 meeting but want to offer input, PRIOR TO THE MEETING contact Rick Dove by telephone at 586-1492, by fax at 586-2430, or by email at dove@parshift.com. Your input will be presented by proxy. No input will be accepted after July 2nd.

July 11 is a community decision making meeting. Information presented and generated at the July 2 meeting will be assembled into a group of alternate proposals for the La Lama community to vote upon. It is possible that we will also vote for a Fire Chief at this meeting if this is timely and in keeping with regulatory procedures.

Why the rush? Things have been happening!

• The Forest Service has agreed to provide approximately one acre of land on lower Lama road next to Rita Hall’s property and across the road from Mark Rogers property. It is expected that this land will be "given" to the County for our use as a site for a fire house and community center prior to mid-July.
• The $50,000 appropriated by the State legislature for our fire house is expected to arrive at the County offices (they are the fiscal administrators of these funds) by mid-July.
• An additional $10,000 of Federal funds has been offered by the County toward a community center, provided that it is spent by December of this year.
• The fire house construction must be formally bid according to County rules. If we can help the County finalize a bid package so that it is ready to post upon receipt of funds (mid-July), two weeks after posting a decision can be made about those bid responses and alternative options if no bids are satisfactory. Thus, it is possible to start construction in August in time to have four heated walls around a fire truck before the winter sets in. We do expect to provide a significant amount of community labor and services in the construction activity in order to obtain something reasonable - and expandable with time - for our limited funds.

Fire Truck? Yes! At this writing it is expected that the County Commissioners will have voted today (June 9) to give us the use of a suitable fire truck currently parked in the County yard. Possession of a suitable truck is necessary to begin our one-year probationary period with the State Fire Marshall. At the completion of the probationary period we will be eligible to receive somewhere between $20,000-$25,000 per year for operation, maintenance, and expansion of the Fire Department.

Progress reports on VFD organization activities can be seen on our web site in the Fire Department pages.