Curtiss preps new offer for fire hall rent
Curtiss officials are prepping for a second round of negotiations with the local fire district after getting a chilly reception last month when they asked for a $10,000 hike in yearly rent, plus utilities, for their fire station.
This time around, the village is proposing a more modest $2,000 increase in the annual rent, but they’re also asking the Owen-Withee-Curtiss Fire District to take on a greater share of the building maintenance, insurance and utilities.
As an alternative, they are also offering to sell the building outright to the fire district for about $1.3 million.
Both of these offers were approved at a special Aug. 10 board meeting, along with a new usage agreement for the building and a history of how the station came to be.
The offers, which will be presented to the district board at its Aug. 25 meeting, are based on meticulous calculations of what the village has already invested in the building and what officials believe is a fair price based on how much the fire district uses the hall.
“We didn’t make up our numbers out of thin air,” said trustee Jon Unruh. “Every single number is documented.”
The annual rent payment of $18,000, for example, is based on 50 percent of what the village has paid toward the fire hall since it was built in 2015, divided over a 45- year period (the estimated lifespan of the building from this point forward.) Village officials have thoroughly documented how much was spent on the fire hall and what the remaining payments will be for its outstanding loan.
Besides the $18,000 in rent, the village also wants the district to pay for two-thirds of the insurance and the building and grounds maintenance, plus 100 percent of the heat and electricity the district uses. As of right now, the village pays all the utilities and insurance and handles most of the maintenance.
The building’s sale price of $1.3 million is based on what the village initially paid for the building plus about $164,000 in interest payments on a loan the village has been paying since 2016.
Village officials are also providing the district board with a one-page history of the building itself, detailing how the district pushed for the new station to be built and how the design was almost exclusively handled by the district. According to the village’s history, the former district chief told village officials at the time that Curtiss may lose its fire hall if it did not build a new one. Before the new station was built, the village’s fire hall consisted of a 1,600-square-foot garage attached to the village clerk’s office.
The village board was able to cut about $300,000 in expenses from the fire hall project, but for the most part, village officials said the district was in charge of how it was designed and built.
Then, when the village went from the old 1,600 feet of garage space to the 10,560-square-foot fire hall — more than six times the space — the fire district’s rent payments increased by only $4,000 per year (33 percent), from $12,000 to $16,000.
Based on village officials’ calculations, Curtiss is now paying close to $72,000 per year for fire-related expenses, including a $55,000 loan payment for the hall, $10,000 in utilities and another $10,000 in fire protection fees to the district.
“That’s a lot of money for a village this size,” Unruh said.
DPW Larry Swarr, who did most of the research that went into the proposals, pointed out that none of the other seven municipalities in the fire district pay nearly as much for fire protection, even though Curtiss represents the second smallest share of property within the district.
