County, Redcliff have early talks on joint firehall

Cypress County and Redcliff have held preliminary discussions on potentially building a new joint fire hall for the Redcliff and Box Springs fire departments, but both municipalities are confirming there is no firm timeline as to when.

“There has been nothing formal,” says Cypress County CAO Doug Henderson. “I know the town had mentioned they want to build a new fire hall, and they asked if the county wanted to share in the building of that fire hall.

“As far as merging them goes, they haven’t got to that stage at all. It is however, in the Fire Master Plan the county should look at that in a threeto five-year time-frame ... But in the immediate future, that is not on the table.”

Redcliff’s director of community and protective services Kim Dalton says merging the two departments into one new facility does make sense.

“It’s something we have been discussing for a couple of years,” confirms Dalton. “We are all inter-twined already. Out of the 20 something fire service members in Redcliff, I think 18 are on both fire departments.”

Dalton also confirms the town has already been planning for the construction of a new facility, regardless of what Cypress County ultimately decides.

“We’ve been putting money away for a new fire hall,” explains Dalton. “It’s something we want to do on the horizon but we haven’t decided on the timing at all.”

Dalton says likely the county and town will be continuing discussions on this for the next couple years before Redcliff council decides to pull the trigger one way or the other.

“Redcliff participated in the Fire Master Plan of Cypress County that was recently completed, and has not yet sat down to discuss potential synergies or opportunities identified in the master plan ... Before the master plan was released, we did sit down with Cypress County, and kind of went through plans of what a new fire hall might look like. But that all got put on the back-burner while we worked on the Fire Master Plan.”