Colby moves forward with rezoning plan

By Nathaniel Underwood

Following a public hearing Tuesday, the Colby City Council voted to move to forward with rezoning several properties in the downtown area to prevent future first-floor residential developments.

The redesignation of these commercial properties from CG-1 to CG-2 will prohibit these properties from having residential spaces on the first floors of the buildings, but otherwise, the regulations will remain the same as the CG-1 designation.

The main concern for citizens who appeared at the public hearing revolved around how the zoning change would affect properties that currently have residential spaces on the first floor. According to city ordinances, those properties would be grandfathered into the new ordinance and would not be required to change the use of those spaces.

“I’m grandfathered in, but I’m here because I don’t want to be grandfathered out someday when I want to sell the place,” LeRoy Kralcik, who owns a property on First Street that was included in the new rezoning changes, said. The public was informed that the zoning change would not affect properties that currently have residential on the first floor — unless those spaces were changed back to commercial use at any time in the future. Once those changes have been made, those properties cannot go back to having residential on the first floor. However, residential may remain as long as there are no changes,

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even if the property changes hands of ownership.

“The object is, because those were originally zoned for commercial use and used as commercial properties in those areas, the issue you run into if we all of a sudden have our entire downtown as all residential, where are these people supposed to park?” said city clerk Connie Gurtner as a way of explaining the changes. “There’s no overnight parking allowed by a lot of these properties.”

Another noted objective was that the city is trying to revitalize the downtown area on First Street and along Highway 13 and bring more business back into that area.

“According to our comprehensive plan that we just adopted, we are going to try to beef up this area for economic development and some business and this, I think, is one step looking to the future,” city council member Todd Schmidt said.

Property owners expressed some concern over how viable that goal may be.

Ben Beaty, who also owns a property on First Street, said he believes that there isn’t as much demand for commercial spaces as there is for residential, especially small brick and mortar shops in small towns. Finding individuals willing to lease these spaces for those purposes could be difficult, he said.

Following the hearing, the city council voted unanimously to pass the ordinance to rezone the selected downtown properties from the CG-1 to the CG-2 designation.

SCBA gear purchase

A lengthy discussion regarding the potential purchase of new Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) gear for the Central Fire and EMS district was held later in the evening.

The fire and EMS district is looking to update the aging gear that they currently have. While a recent purchase of new bottles in 2019 means that the department will not have to replace them until 2034, the rest of the packs are much older.

District chief Joe Mueller, who was present at the meeting, said the current gear that they have is 23 years old and, while it is not required to replace them after 15 years of use like the bottles, it is still the industry standard to do so. He also noted that while they have enough packs in good enough shape to get by for now, they have already been using damaged packs for replacement parts and the reserves for these are getting low. Additionally, it was stated that the manufacturer of the packs, MSA, is no longer making replacement parts for the packs the department currently has.

The estimated cost for 32 new packs that the Central Fire and EMS district received came out to approximately $278,000, a price tag that struck some as quite steep.

It was also noted that this purchase was not on the district’s 2025 budget, and while the district had the capital to make the purchase at this time, it would run their savings rather low for such capital expenses, given that there is also a new ambulance purchase on the horizon in 2027.

Central Fire and EMS board president Larry Oehmichen was also at Tuesday night’s meeting and proposed that Colby’s council not approve the purchase at this time, but instead give the district board more time to review other options.

The bottles and the packs must be purchased from the same manufacturer, as they are incompatible with gear from other manufacturers, and as such, Oehmichen believed that they may be able to get a better price if they are able to take the purchase out to bid.

One alternative to purchasing the new equipment now would be to instead purchase refurbished equipment from Dalmatian Fire Equipment in Colorado. In a preliminary quote Oehmichen received from the company, a set of 32 refurbished packs from 2007 would cost roughly $27,000.

These packs would be a holdover until the bottles’ lifetime would expire in 2034, at which point the district could get prices from other manufacturers as they would no longer be restricted to trying to match the packs and the bottles and would instead be buying both at the same time.

There was some pushback on this plan of action, with some council members concerned about the quality and safety of older, refurbished equipment.

“Did anybody talk to our firefighters on how they felt about these refurbished packs?” council member Dan Hederer asked. “I’d sooner see this money spent on new, high quality gear. What kind of price do we put on our firefighters’ safety?” “I get Larry’s alternative, but if I was going to have to look at something that was 20 years old in a year or keep the stuff that I have that I know, I’d keep the stuff I know,” Mueller added. “It would save us $27,000 and, if you want to try to wean it out until the bottles expire, then you know, that’s just the way it is.”

Oemichen stated that sacrificing the safety of citizens and firefighters is not an option, but rather he wanted the city councils to give the fire and EMS district board more time to examine and research other possible ways of handling the replacement of the gear. He said that if this purchase is made now, it would be difficult to make any other large capital purchases in the near future.

When put to a roll call vote, the motion to purchase the new packs passed 4-1. Council members Hederer, Schmidt, Liz Baumgartner and Nancy O’Brien voted for the motion while Jason Lindeman voted against and Randy Hesgard abstained.

A motion to purchase will still need to be passed by other member municipalities as well, with the purchases needing 66 percent support of the seven members.