By Gary Pinnell
Highlands Today
SEBRING, Fla. — If not now, when? That’s the question Harvey Craven asked.
The downtown EMS station is in a 1923 house. The Valerie Road station is in a 1950 home. The main EMS station shares a module with Craven’s administrative offices.
“It’s only 11 years old,” the Highlands County EMS director said Friday. “But it’s got a lot of, I guess you call them environmental conditions.”
The roof leaks. The septic tank must be pumped every few months. The heating and air conditioning system is insufficient, Craven said.
On Sept. 16, the county commissioners ordered a needs assessment from Fitch and Associates, a Missouri firm that consults on EMS and fire stations. When that report comes on March 30, commissioners can make decisions.
Meanwhile, construction is still on hold for all three EMS stations.
Commissioners have been discussing the downtown station on Eucalyptus Street for at least a decade. Earlier this year, a budget was developed to replace it, but line-item funding was removed while administrators re-evaluate the options.
The main station on George Boulevard currently has a budget of $831,000.
However, Craven and other staffers are still deciding whether to separate the EMS administration from the ambulances. Offices could move across George near the gasoline pumps, in vacant space at the health department, or perhaps to a bay at the Kenilworth Building, where the clerk of courts and supervisor of elections store records.
The Valerie station has a $200,000 budget, but that’s a placeholder until Sun N’ Lake supervisors and the sheriff’s office decides whether the fire department, deputies and EMS paramedics and EMTs should room together in a joint station on Florida Hospital property.
“We were going to remodel Valerie Road station,” Craven said. “From there, it went to, ‘Instead of remodeling an old house, why don’t we put fire, EMS and law enforcement into one station?’”
Sun N’ Lake supervisors decided to replace its full-time firefighters with West Sebring Volunteer Fire Department. Instead of keeping firefighters in the SNL administration offices and an attached Quonset hut, the joint station was proposed on an SNL lot. Then Florida Hospital Heartland volunteered a site.
“We’ve picked a site the hospital owned,” Craven said. The idea was to have Florida Hospital deed a site to the county with a reverter clause if the county quit using the lot for the intended purpose.
“But somehow, that site we picked was a little too valuable to the hospital,” Craven said. So the exact location is still being worked out. County Administrator June Fisher’s note to commissioners on Nov. 26 said “SNL and Florida Hospital facilitating exchange of conservation easement for EMS station site.”
SNL and the county own hundreds of lots. Why not just pick one? The problem is more complex.
“We want to keep close to Sun N’ Lakes and to Valerie,” Craven said. Moving too far east or west would increase response times; moving north would stray into the territory of the EMS station in Avon Park and decrease response time to the south.
County EMS stations are also located on Hammock Road with the West Sebring Fire Department, and there are two near downtown Lake Placid.
“Lake Placid is such an enormous area to cover,” Craven said. Lake Placid to Venus is 18 miles, Lake Placid to Lorida is 22 miles. Lake Placid to Brighton is 25 miles.
EMS stations need at least one bay, and a conventional garage attached to a house won’t do because modern ambulances are too tall and wide to fit inside. Since EMS crews live there 24 hours a day, a living room, kitchen, two bathrooms and bedrooms are essential.
Craven wants five bedrooms and two garage bays because Highlands County’s population is expected to expand. The U.S. Census says the population grew from 21,000 in 1960, to 30,000 in 1970, to 48,000 in 1980, to 68,000 in 1990, to 87,000 in 2000, to 99,000 in 2010.
Existing houses would work, Craven said, but they must be zoned for an EMS station, which isn’t likely. Also, neighbors would be disturbed by the sirens.
“Can we survive in what we’re in?” Craven asked. “Yes, but at some point in time, it costs more to repair and maintain them. Do we want to sink more money into repairs and renovations, or do we want a new station that will last for 30 or 40 years?”
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©2014 the Highlands Today (Sebring, Fla.)