San Marcos City Council Amends Budget For Fire Station No. 2

By Terra Rivers | Managing Editor

The San Marcos City Council approved a budget amendment to the build-design agreement for the new Fire Station #2 located in the La Cima development on Tuesday night.

During the city council work session, council members received a presentation on budget considerations regarding the relocated Fire Station.

The station, which will follow the design of Station 4, will be located over the Edward Aquifer Recharge Zone and will require more extensive site preparation.

According to Les Stephens, the Chief of the San Marcos Fire Department, the donated land within the La Cima development is the ideal location for the relocation of fire station No. 2 but will require three detention ponds on the property for runoff control.

Chase Stapp, Director of Public Safety, told the council the cost estimates were projected based on the pre-construction estimates made for Station No. 4 but costs have escalated by an estimated 17.4 percent since; however, cost reduction efforts by Jacobs and City Staff identified $250,750 in savings through the design of the facility.

Staff said the funding overage will be covered by interest earnings on bonds that were sold early, which comes to approximately “$1 million in capacity”; the additional costs for mitigation in the recharge zone were estimated at approximately $250,000.

Council members expressed concerns about the station’s location and the limited-service coverage it will provide with so much land still in the ETJ. 

Stephens said the instruction he had been given from previous city managers was to provide the best coverage I could with the five existing Fire Stations before the city began to build new ones. 

“Our budget this year is $11,147,000; divided by five, we’re looking at about $2.29 million per station,” Stephens said. “And 93 percent of that is personnel cost. So what I was challenged to do was to correct that 50 percent of the city that doesn’t lie within existing fire station districts…make it the best I could, and then we would visit about subsequent fire stations.” 

Stephens continued to say that the first of which will be the Trace Fire Station, No. 6. 

“I was not given money, although, I did ask for money multiple times in the budget to buy a parcel of land,” Stephens said. “This piece of land, the council acquired through a PID development that saved us at that time was about half a million. In today’s dollars, we’re being told about a million.” 

Councilmember Ed Mihalkanin expressed concerns about fire service to downtown.

Stephens said the answer to the concern downtown would not be corrected by leaving Station No. 2, but by adding a second company to the Fire Station downtown. 

“We currently can’t make entry [to a building downtown],” Stephens said, “Until two stations get there.”

Stephens said he has brought up the need for an additional company to the council and requested during the budget period. 

“In this case, this move benefits a greater body of people than it currently does,” Stapp said.

Fire Station No. 2 Relocation was part of the 2017 Bond Initiatives to address a substantial overlap of coverage around downtown San Marcos.

The amendment to the agreement with Flintco, LLC will set the final guaranteed maximum price for the construction of the new Fire Station in the amount of $5,367,405.00.

The Council approved the Design-Build Agreement with Flintco, LLC, for pre-construction phase services in the amount of $359,357.00 on May 21, 2019.

According to the agenda, the proposed design-build agreement was the second contract award of the 2017 Bond Initiatives; the development of the new fire station is located off of Centerpoint Road and will provide greater support and service to the southwest area of the city.

The agenda states the Guaranteed Maximum Price is the total cost of work for the new fire station including hard construction costs, general conditions costs, design-builder fee and owner contingency.

Stephens said the project is projected to begin after the first of the year and be completed within nine to ten months.

“This is a very difficult vote for me,” Mihalkanin said. “I felt the entire process was rushed; the report was given to us the same day that we were told flatly we had to give direction to staff to have a May 2017 election.”  

Council approved the amendment to the Build-Design Agreement with a 5 to 2 vote with Councilmembers Dr. Joca Marquez and Mihalkanin dissenting.