Bid of $2.8 million under budget for fire training center

SPRINGDALE — Fire Chief Mike Irwin gave the members of the City Council some good news Monday night. The construction bids for a classroom building at the fire training center came in under budget at $2.8 million.

This means the city will have enough 2018 bond money to build and outfit the center.

“I’ll even have some left over,” Irwin said.

The council will vote whether to accept the bid at its May 12 meeting.

The city received more than 200 bids for the project, Irwin said.

Flintco bid a guaranteed maximum price of $2.8 million to build the Mickey Jackson Fire Training Center on Turnbow Avenue.

The 9,200-square-foot building will include offices, two classrooms, a garage for training with reserve fire equipment and a small kitchen, Irwin said. Construction will take about a year.

The center already includes a fire training tower built with money from the capital improvement project fund.

Springdale voters approved a $200 million bond program in February 2018, which included $16 million to build three new stations

and the classroom building at the training center.

The city paid $3 million to build and outfit Station No. 7 near Hellstern Middle School.

Station No. 8, costing about $1 million for construction, will open in mid-June on Huntsville Avenue near the city’s industrial parks.

Construction will begin Station No. 9 in mid-May, Irwin said. The council on April 14 accepted a $2.9 million maximum price for the station from Milestone Construction. That station will sit across the street from the Shaw Family Park under construction in the northwest corner of Springdale

The bond money also paid $300,000 for the Fire Department’s portion of a new emergency services radio system and $2.6 for fire equipment.

Irwin said the new ladder truck to be based at Station No. 8 cost about $1 million. It already serves the city from Station No. 1.

On Jan. 21, Irwin and Wyman Morgan, the city’s director of finance and administration, presented the council with a contingency plan. It detailed how the city would find the money to pay for the training center project as the city began to see construction costs on other bond projects increase.

Irwin said the department could use $300,000 of state Act 833 money as a contingency to build Station No. 9, if money from the bond ran short. The act returns to fire departments tax money residents pay in their homeowners insurance, fire insurance and property taxes, Morgan said.

The Fire Department receives nearly $90,000 a year in this money and has saved most of it for the past three years, Irwin said.

“We don’t know we’re short yet, but we want to make some plans just in case,” Morgan said. “We feel we can confidently build the new stations and the training center and have some left over.”

Irwin looked the Act 833 money to provide tables, chairs and other furnishings and “some stuff that’s typical to any fire station out there,” such as an air filling station and extension hose, Irwin said.

City staff told the council April 6 the Act 833 money also could be used to pay utility costs for the Fire Department if the city loses revenue in the region’s economic shutdown caused by covid-19.