Fire officials blame economy for referendum loss

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

SUGAR GROVE - With the voters rejection of its rate increase request, Sugar Grove fire officials said they have not decided whether to try again next spring.

“We don’t have a next step,” Fire Chief Marty Kunkel said. “The earliest we can look at it again is this spring and that’s not realistic and there is no fall election.”

The Sugar Grove Fire Protection District asked for a 14-cent increase on its current rate of 50 cents to build another fire station just north of Denny Road east of Bliss and south of Interstate 88 and another in the southeast part of the district. On Nov. 4, voters rejected the request 4,418 to 2,799, according to official results from the Kane County Clerk.

The request was sought to shorten response time in the  district, which is a sprawling 34 square miles and serves 15,000 people. Its southern boundary goes to Route 30 and goes past I-88 to the north.

Officials had proposed a $3 million station on Denny Road to serve 3,000 people in Prestbury, Lake of Bliss Woods, Strafford Woods, Black Walnut Trails, Walnut Woods, Windstone and Hannaford Farms subdivisions. The second station’s location in the southeast portion of the district had not been decided.

Kunkel said the goal was to reduce responses times of eight to 10 minutes in those areas to  four to six minutes, which are nationally accepted standards.

As a way of meeting lower response times, the district will maintain its agreement with the Oswego Fire Department to share its station at Cannonball and Orchard roads in Montgomery.

“It failed because of the economy,” Kunkel said. “It was absolutely the worst time to ask for one, and we knew that going in. Whatever the outcome, we needed to state the reasons - which was to build satellite stations in order to reduce response times.”

Kunkel said many people who live in the general area of the main station have good response times. These voters would have nothing to gain from approving a tax increase for outlying areas, but it would have cost them more in trying economic times.

The fire district board did not do a campaign to get the vote out and sent letters to registered voters stating its need.

“We did not do focus groups. We did not do major campaigning. It was pretty straightforward: We sent out letters,” Kunkel said.

Still, the question lost by a 60-40 split which Kunkel considers not to be too bad considering they did virtually no promotion.

Fire board member John Lehman said the need remains despite the referendum results.

“When the economy turns around and development does increase and when the timing is right, we will approach the constituency again,” Lehman said. “We will just pick a time when it has a better chance of people voting in our favor.”

Lehman said the weak economy was the largest factor in the question’s failure, though lack of promotion may have played a role as well.

“There’s no doubt there’s different levels of effort to put forth when trying to pass a referendum,” Lehman said. “It’s up to the board to decide how we’ll go about doing the education of the public. We’ll re-evaluate that for the future.”