KC-area voters approved $1.8 million fire station. Why has it sat empty for two years?
The Smithville Area Fire Protection District has a problem.
In 2012, voters in the district north of Kansas City agreed to borrow money to build a new fire station. Twice, though, those same voters declined to raise their property taxes to pay for any firefighters to actually operate the station.
The district’s board built the station anyway, just south of Paradise, Missouri, on the east side of Smithville Lake. It’s known as Station #3.
It cost $1.8 million. Two years after opening, the station still sits empty.
“There are signs on the front of the building that say, ‘if you need help, call 911’ because nobody’s there,“ said Smithville District Fire Chief Dave Cline. “It truly shouldn’t be that way.”
Well, yes. And while there’s a potential fix, it will be expensive.
On Tuesday, the fire district board will decide if it wants to put another property tax increase on the ballot in November 2020. Cline says he wants to use the money, plus funds from a sales tax, to hire 12 firefighters, enough to fully staff Station #3.
That would eventually double his firefighting force. It will also double the fire district’s property tax levy, costing taxpayers more than $1 million a year.
Cline says he doesn’t want to scare anyone, but he points out that his firefighters can’t respond to more than one incident at a time — if a house catches fire while his crew is out on a car accident, “something bad is going to happen.”
That’s disconcerting. But it’s also problematic that the district built a fire station without a funding source to staff it.
The mismanagement of the Smithville fire district drew the attention of Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway last year. The board paid improper bonuses, she found. Accounting was poor. Travel and training costs raised questions.
But the empty station was the attention-getter. “There was no analysis of proposed additional costs or other long-term financial planning,” the auditor’s office said.
In a follow-up audit last week, Galloway said improvements had been made, but she pointed out the obvious: Station #3 is still empty.
Smithville voters will likely face a tough choice: either raise their taxes, or watch an empty firehouse continue to sit empty. Difficult decision or not, the board should place a tax measure on the ballot when it meets Tuesday.
In the meantime, politicians everywhere can learn an important lesson from Smithville: Don’t build something you can’t afford to actually use.