| Aug 23, 2012



Photo: The Ompah fire hall, which is not only too small to hold all the equipment the fire crew uses, it is also slowly sinking into the swampy ground

“Give us a chance to decide what we want to do, and to do it right.”

That was the final word from North Frontenac Mayor Bud Clayton, at least for this week, after hearing a chorus of comments and suggestions from Ompah area residents at two meetings on subsequent days.

The first meeting was a public meeting organized by the Canonto Lake Property Owners' Association on Sunday August 19. It drew an overflow crowd of an estimated 160 people to the Ompah hall. The community hall is located in the same building as the Ompah fire hall, which is not only too small to hold all the equipment the fire crew uses, it is also slowly sinking into the swampy ground.

The second meeting, held in the same location, was a regularly scheduled North Frontenac Council meeting on Monday, August 20.

The hall was less crowded at the Council meeting, but there were about 25 Ompah firefighters and supporters on hand to hear a presentation by Jim Holton, as well as costing numbers that were put together by fire department member Brian Moffit.

“I wondered how much it would cost to build a fire hall,” Moffit said as he began a short power point presentation in front of Council, “so I made some calls and got some written quotes.”

What Moffit came up with was a 45x100 foot building with 16-foot high ceilings, in either steel or wood frame construction, at a cost of $348,000.

The township had been prepared to spend up to $550,000 on a 2750 square foot fire hall that was to be built in conjunction with a Frontenac County ambulance base. However at the public meeting on Sunday, Mayor Clayton said that of that money, $150,000 was to come from reserve funds, but “was only being made available as an inducement for the county to bring the ambulance base to Ompah, which is not going to happen now.”

On July 16, North Frontenac Council voted to pull out of the ambulance base/fire hall project because the bids on a Request for Proposal for the preferred bid on the project would have meant a $724,000 cost to the township for the contract alone, not including ancillary costs, which Mayor Clayton said could have resulted in North Frontenac ratepayers being on the hook for up to $1 million.

At the public meeting on August 19, the consensus among the people who aired their views during the public session was that Council made the right decision to get out of the deal with the county, but that now they should get going immediately to build a fire hall on the site they purchased for that purpose.

Leo Ladouceur, a former member of the Ompah fire crew, who served as a resource person for the firefighters at the public meeting, summed up the perspective of most of the people in the hall when he said: “We expect the mayor to get the will together to build the fire hall we need. And please build the fire hall we need and not one the size of a councilor's hat.”

Mayor Clayton, as well as Councilors Watkins, Inglis and Hunter, who were present at the Sunday morning meeting, all committed to voting for a fire hall to be built in Ompah.

At least one other vote on Council would be needed to support building a fire hall.

There was nothing on the formal agenda at the Monday night meeting about the fire hall, aside from the presentation by Jim Holton and Brian Moffit. But Councilor Inglis said that one way or another he will make sure the matter is brought forward at the next meeting, on September 10.

“Somebody will prepare an administrative report and try to bring this to a vote,” said Inglis.

If indeed the project receives support in principle from Council on September 10, there will still be two major issues to resolve.

The first has to do with the property that is slated to house the building. In pursuing the ill-fated ambulance base/fire hall project, it came to light that the property was once a service station, and a consultant looking into possible contamination of the site concluded that a $30,000 study may or may not be sufficient to give the site a clean bill of environmental health.

Council will need to decide if it wants to ignore the consultant's advice and go ahead; to seek a new site for the fire hall; or to reverse their own decision of July 16 not to proceed with the study and invest the $30,000 and perhaps more to clear the site.

The second issue is the actual cost of a fire hall.

There is $400,000 in the 2012 fire budget for a fire hall in Ompah, but until the township itself costs the building the precise costs will not be known.

Mayor Clayton asked Brian Moffit for all the information he has gathered about cost, but the township will have to follow their own process to determine the final price.

While the future prospects for a new Ompah fire hall remain in question, the public meeting established that the seasonal cottager population stands firmly behind their fire crews, partly because fire crews deliver one of the few township services that seasonal populations can identify, and partly for financial reasons.

One seasonal resident pointed out that he has recently re-insured his cottage and while doing it he asked the insurer what the effect of closing the Ompah fire hall would be on his insurance.

“He said it would go up 23%,” the man said. “That would cost me $450.”

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