Council Members Michels and Griffin Urge Council to Get Moving on Fire Station

By Doug Marrin, STN Reporter

At its June 28, 2021 meeting, the Dexter City Council broached a new fire station, not once but twice.

Councilmember Zach Michels has perhaps been the City’s most ardent student in constructing new fire stations melding it with his experience as an urban planner. In 2019, he attended a seminar on station design in Chicago at his own cost, which the City later reimbursed. Michels has attended numerous webinars hosted by the Fire Industry Education Resource Organization.

Michels has regularly sounded the alarm bell about the escalating cost of fire stations and what the now-famous delays over it will cost city residents. To once again punctuate this refrain, Michels shared with the Council an email that he drafted in response to a Dexter resident’s comments on the City’s fire-fighting upgrades.

“I reached out to a national expert last week to get a slide from a webinar he gave the past year showing fire station cost escalation since 2008,” Michels said in the email. He lists the annual inflationary cost of building a new fire station as:

2008 -12%

2009 -16%

2010 +9%

2011 +5%

2012 +11%

2013 +7%

2014 +21%

2015 +3%

2016 +18%

2017 +22%

2018 +20%

2019 +8%

The expert Michels references is Ken Newell of Stewart-Cooper-Newell Architects, a firm that has been building fire stations and other first responder facilities around the country since 1971. Newell gives presentations nationwide on new facilities. He gave a presentation to the Dexter City Council in 2019 on new fire station requirements and construction costs.

Michels adds, “(Newell) did say the bids for 2020 were extremely volatile and 2021 has been even more so. (Extremely volatile is coded speech for unpredictably higher.).”

In an email to the Sun Times News, Councilmember Michels provided the following graph using Mr. Newell’s inflationary figures. The chart shows the effect delay has had on the price tag of upgrading Dexter’s fire-fighting capabilities.

This graph shows the runaway inflationary effect of new fire station construction. Image courtesy of Zach Michels.

• Red Line: Represents the 2016 estimated cost of remodeling the current fire station (from a 10-08-18 council workshop packet). The original estimate of $3,860,000 has more than doubled to $7,976,233 in 2022. Note: The Council passed a resolution in early 2019, taking a remodel of the current station out of consideration.
• Blue Line: Represents the 2018 estimate for building a new station at the corner of Ann Arbor St. & Meadowview Ct. (also from the 10-8-18 packet). The original estimate has grown by approximately $1.9 million in three years.
• Green Line: Represents a revised estimate for Ann Arbor/Meadowview. In one year, the escalation cost has added more than $700,000 to the bill.

“By the time we actually get a shovel in the ground, the greatest single expense of any fire station project will have been the escalation costs,” laments Michels.

Councilmember Jamie Griffin also addressed the Council on its lack of movement for a new fire station. At the council member’s request, a discussion of engaging an outside facilitator to the Council move forward was placed on the agenda.

“There is some reason that this just is not moving forward or isn't getting resolved, and it's not clear to me what that is,” said Griffin to the Council. “I think we could benefit by having an outside perspective, somebody to help us navigate that conversation, at least initially.”

Griffin had queried the Michigan Municipal League and MSU Extension regarding their workshops to improve government bodies' cohesiveness. She presented the Council with two possibilities for its consideration.

While not opposed to the idea, Mayor Keough expressed a desire first to involve the new council members in the discussion. “I think that there are three new council members that haven't had a chance to explore this at all in the seven months that we've been together,” said Keough. “We're going to have our first planned conversation on this topic at our next meeting, along with our newest, seventh council member.”

“We need to go around, and each one of us needs to say what's on our mind about this topic,” he added. “If we decide that after hearing each other out a little bit, that we think it has to be facilitated, then we can certainly go that route.”

Councilmember Michels, a battle-scarred veteran of many heated debates about fire station upgrades, was dubious about the Council coming to any consensus on the subject. “I will say that I am not optimistic that we'll get anything resolved. We're already up against the deadline for building something in the next construction season, which puts us back to 2023 at the earliest.” Michels pointed again to the runaway inflation costs of fire station construction.

Griffin agreed with Keough that it would be better to wait until new Councilmember Sanam Arab took her seat on the Council but disagreed that the current Council hasn’t been discussing a new fire station in the past seven months.

“We have talked about this as a Council, currently,” said Griffin. “We had a number of goal-setting sessions where this came up. We had a separate work session where the Chief came and updated the needs assessment. Zach has submitted a number of action items related to this.”

Griffin reiterated her support for a facilitator. “There's something that's not working in either how we're talking about it, how we're approaching it, who is facilitating the conversation, or how we're orienting ourselves to the discussion. So, I maintain that this is my preferred way of moving forward.”

Keough remained optimistic about building a consensus with the new council without a facilitator. “I think we’re ready to get there,” he said. “I’m optimistic about that conversation and looking forward to it.”

Michels noted that the deadline for a November ballot proposal to fund a new fire station is July 27, adding that missing this year’s election could add another 10-15% onto the cost.

The agenda item was for council discussion only. The Council took no action with the idea of picking it up again in July.