With a referendum question on the March 17 primary ballot, constituents served by the Randolph Fire Protection District will decide whether to construct a new fire station through the issue of general obligation bonds totaling $4 million.
The district includes Heyworth and surrounding areas south of Bloomington-Normal.
Frank Friend is trustee president of the district and also serves as a captain for the Bloomington Fire Department. He said the current facility in Randolph has some problems.
Friend said the district has modern fire trucks that no longer fit in their building.
“We’ve been good stewards of that building, and we’ve been good stewards of the district, and we’ve simply grown out of that building,” he said.
The Randolph district operates out of five locations within the village of Heyworth, including a fire station, an ambulance station, house, a printing press building and administrative offices shared with town staff.
“We have the ambulance that’s housed in a totally different building on the other side of town that a lot of people don’t even know that the ambulance service resides there,” Friend said. “It was built as a township building to hold heavy equipment. It was never designed to be housing people overnight, to run emergency services.
“So, all those buildings are very old. They’re antiquated. They were never meant for the service that they’re providing, except for the fire station itself.”
The building even has issues from nearby field runoff. Friend said rodents have not made for an acceptable recruiting environment. That’s in a small township, where retention of staff is difficult enough as it is.
Friend would like to see taxpayers approve a station to replace the 70-year-old existing structure. It would be placed in the middle of the village.
“We did a complete needs assessment and determined that it was not viable for us to do any more remodeling or any more demolition and adding onto the station as it sits now. It was going to cost the district somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 a square foot just to add a couple bedrooms and an ADA compliant bathroom,” Friend said.
The fate of the would-be former structure is not known. In preliminary talks, Friend said the village of Heyworth may be able to make use of it.
If approved, the owner of a $200,000 would pay $192 more per year in property taxes.
Although, a tax increase of any kind can come as a big ask. Friend said the consolidation of fire services into one central location will make the community safer.
“That allows us to do joint training by having a new fire station. It allows us to have a larger training room where we can bring in the Illinois Fire Service Institute, state fire academy, to host classes…” he said. “It gives us a great deal of opportunity for recruiting and retention of EMTs, and if we don’t have the staff, we can’t send the ambulance out on calls.”
Centralized service also matters to the area because of its size. Friend said an isolated community like Heyworth needs the station to be the "heartbeat and brain" for power outages, wind events, snow or tornadoes.
“We really put community members at a disadvantage in currently how we operate," said Friend, noting a 29% increase in call volume.
“Heyworth is growing, there’s always some talk of assisted or independent living type environments to be built,” he said.
Friend said his colleagues across Central Illinois reported call volumes doubling within 12 months of an elderly-living facility opening in their communities.
