Remarks by Mathew Salter
94 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 4 of 4
I absolutely don't support that. And I think that you'd just be creating more of a hornet's nest, which I guess you enjoy doing.
You want to sue your own people? You can put it on. It's going to inflame everybody. You're going to sue your own citizens for trying to save their fire station.
You have to talk into the mic because it's being recorded.
So the first thing that I wanted to acknowledge, are you aware that we had an operational fire station working in this building? Yes. With the police and the paramedics? Yes. Okay. So what I'm finding a surprise here is that you're saying that the fire department needs 3400 square feet. And we have just reconstructed Sleepy Hollow in our department, and it's 2400 feet with 400 square feet of a shared gym. So how is it that Sleepy Hollow only needs 2000 square feet, but we need 3400? Please, Kristen.
I'm just doing the fire square footage. There's paramedics at 1,900, 1,500 of shared, apparatus 3,100, and then the police station 3,800. What I would like to know is that, you know, sometimes if I go to buy kids and I go to the candy store and I say, how much candy do you want for Halloween or on Halloween night? You get a huge bag of candy and they want it all.
But, you know, we have to approach this practically. So I think that Sleepy Hollows and Fairfax said this is the size of the building we have. This is what we can build within it. But this plan looks like we went and took all these inputs Mayor Mrakas, From a very old study and said, oh, we have to build it this way. Mayor Mrakas, So let me ask other projects, you were working on did you interview the heads of the departments, did you work within constraints of budget and size and space, or do you just go to the department heads and then whatever square footage they they want you build.
Mayor Mrakas, Then there's a dialogue in terms of fire operations that needs to happen with the department yeah and what about police, why is, why is the fire department only 3434 hundred sure need a police station for 3800. Mayor Mrakas, And I mean if we're small town here yeah we've got to two officers on duty and the chief sometimes So why does the police station have to be 3800 feet.
City Council Chambers, And to be very crystal clear the Mary mcgrath. Mayor Mrakas, numbers you took was for a separate building correct for a standalone they were just putting those requirements here. Mayor Mrakas, Because what I think we all need to acknowledge is that everything was operating in 2025 here, we actually did it on the site in this even more constrained than what. Mayor Mrakas, You know you're saying the existing square footage is 8400 but you're saying we should move to 13,000 square feet, quite a big big additions, but we were operating with all these departments here in…
Okay, I have one last question, which is the apparatus bays. Are you assuming we're keeping those apparatus bays that we have?
But didn't sleepy sleepy hollow did not destroy their bays they kept their bays when they redid the and their their bays were from the same era and the same size so I just want to be very clear they there are actual projects going on in the Ross Valley fire department where they didn't demolish the bays they didn't expand the bays they kept the bays as they were and they use them today in their project. They only eliminated the residential and redid the residential because they used the constraints that they had. And so I really encourage us in this process to realize it's not an unlimited…
So with the, there was in the CAC plan, there was blocking showing different square footage for each of the departments. Did you look at that? Yes. Okay. But then you were told the direction was go with what Mary McGrath and the previous studies that were done by KPA for the square footage and not acknowledge what the CAC did. Is that correct?
Mayor Mrakas, Okay, and then, did you look at sleepy hollow and we will wear that we just that the Ross Valley fire just did it. Mayor Mrakas, Really, you didn't look at that.
Mayor Mrakas, Okay, so if we asked you to look at that and what they designed and how they fit because even without the fire chiefs yeah we know he was a part of that redo we could use what they had done there to inform what we could do here. City Council Chambers, Is that a fair yeah approach absolutely Okay, thank you.
Whatever you say. I would say the first thing is this is just a total failure of leadership. The fact that we're here at this point after we had come together with a plan to include a fire station, it's every meeting is some attempt to undermine the will of the people. And the people want their fire station. There's no doubt about it, and we'll know that in November. And I don't even know who is directing the staff. To do these things, it makes no sense whatsoever when we've already said we are trying to solve this puzzle of keeping our fire station and using the current facilities. So I'm…
So something that I'd like to be also included is you mentioned that the paramedics have this contract. It was all based on a completely different master plan I'm sorry I I missed that first part you said paramedics we have a a contract with them that refers to a previous master plan that we're redoing no it doesn't exist it it states and I want to correct David Kelly said it was 2050 square feet the lease agreement is 2150 square feet Yeah so what I would love as a part of this is we that was based on the facility's master plan that does not exist anymore that was where they took that number…
I feel like we need to agendize it, I guess, to talk about it.
Because to be very clear, the lease, if you read it, refers to the KPA master facilities plan. That plan doesn't exist anymore. So no matter what you may believe this lease is, it doesn't exist. That plan doesn't exist. We're changing it. So we have to obviously let them know what our new plan is and discuss it with them regardless, because that plan that references over and over doesn't exist.
Mayor Mrakas, So I support that if we don't have a constraint saying when we come back oh well, we have to put 2150 because that's what's in the lease agreement. Mayor Mrakas, So that's that's the little chicken and the egg, then we have to agenda is it and talk about it, because I don't believe that that's what the least says the least says it's kpa. something similar to the KPA facilities master plan, which doesn't exist anymore. So we have to come up with a new plan. So we can agendize it or not. But we have to this is something that has to change.
Right, so Krista Krista said that, just to be clear, I didn't Krista said, we need to agendize this, we need to talk about this, if you change the square footage, she didn't quite say that.