Story by Chris Graham
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Slow down. That’s what the Augusta County Board of Supervisors has decided to do with its work to get a new fire and rescue station in the Riverheads area going.
“We just want to make sure that we’ve got the right place, that there are no other places out there that we hadn’t been made aware of that might fit our specs,” said Riverheads Supervisor Nancy Sorrells after the Board of Supervisors voted 5-1 Wednesday to reopen the process for location and design for a new Riverheads fire and rescue station under the terms of the Virginia Public Private Educational Facilities and Infrastructure Act.
(Link-The request for proposal on the Augusta County government website.)
The county had already set itself on a location last year. Sorrells backed the move to slow things down with the anticipation that the delay in giving the final go-ahead to build won’t hamper the efforts of the volunteer organization that has been getting itself together in the Riverheads district for the past year.
“It was their hope that we’d be working on a building now. But sometimes the wheels of government grinds a little slower than everybody hopes. They’re ready to rock and roll,” Sorrells said of the Riverheads fire and rescue outfit, which is working on the assumption that it will be able to man the station 24-7 once it has a station to man.
The county will be taking conceptual-design bids under the terms of the PPEA law through Feb. 23. A public hearing on the station location is expected in late March or early April, and depending on what would happen from there, the county could break ground on the project in mid-April, with the station operational as soon as late summer, Sorrells said.
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