Fire station approved, but still far from a reality

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The good news is that Las Vegas Fire and Rescue Station 107 will be open for business sometime in early 2011, according to those in the know.

The bad news is that movement on the project, which has been urged by city officials as a necessity, has been reduced to a snail's pace, contingent upon the lawyers and bureaucrats downtown.

If you don't know which fire and rescue station that is, it's the one that finally got the necessary number of votes from Sun City Summerlin homeowners four months ago to make it happen.

That was after an ongoing election campaign in Sun City until there were sufficient votes to approve the measure, which had the support of Mayor Oscar Goodman, the city council and Las Vegas Fire and Rescue. In fact, at one point, the mayor and other city officials came to Sun City to help residents fully understand just how vital the station would be to their well-being.

It's the station that eventually will be built on the northeast corner of Del Webb Boulevard and Sundial Drive -- the very same station in which common sense ultimately prevailed, to the dismay of the 657 homeowners who refused to accept any thought of such a facility in their community.

That was the number of homeowners who voted against the merits of having a fire and rescue station in the midst of a senior citizen community that averages more than five emergency calls a day.

More to the point, it will be a station that could cut several minutes off the response time on emergency calls, a factor of considerable urgency when lives are at stake.

Ultimately, 5,518 of Sun City's 7,781 homeowners voted in favor of allowing the city to spend an estimated $4 million to build Station 107. The significance is that, according to the community's covenants, conditions and restrictions, at least two-thirds of the homeowners had to vote favorably before the facility could become a reality.

"We're making progress," is the way Las Vegas Fire Chief Greg Gammon recently summed up the situation to an audience of Sun City residents. Gammon has been leading the charge for some time to get Station 107 built. It has thus far shaped up as one of the tougher battles in his 25-year career with Las Vegas Fire and Rescue.

"We expect that Sun City will be able to move the tee box on the golf course by the end of the summer. Once that happens, we can start to build," Gammon reported. His reference was to the ninth hole at Palm Valley Golf Course, site of the station.

What it really means is this: The property that will support the 7,500-square-foot station requires some rerouting of the course's ninth hole, a project that will be financed by the city and will not impair the course. But that won't come until the bureaucrats complete the paperwork.

By voting to build the station, Sun City homeowners gave their board of directors permission to enter into an agreement with the municipality to deed the property to the city for $1. In return, the city will take almost three miles of curb line property. That parcel, along Cheyenne Boulevard, is of no value to the community.

Construction project manager Louis Baker said that once the documents are signed, his office will build a "state-of-the-art" station. He also said Station 107 is one of five new facilities planned in the next two years, to be added to 19 already-existing stations.

Of course, that time frame will be contingent upon the alacrity of the crowd downtown.

Herb Jaffe was an op-ed columnist and investigative reporter for most of his 39 years at The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He is the author of the novels "Falling Dominoes" and "One At A Time." Contact him at HJaffe@cox.net.