Voters in Waynesboro, way back in 2007, voted in a referendum to have the city government build a new fire station in the West End.
Seventeen years later, the city broke ground on construction for the West End fire station.
“This is so long overdue,” Waynesboro City Councilman Terry Short Jr. said on Tuesday, after putting down the ceremonial shovel.
The city purchased the land, at the intersection of Lew Dewitt Boulevard and Osage Lane, across from the Zeus Theater, for $1,075,000.
The construction, being led by the Harrisonburg-based Lantz Construction, is being done on a contract valued at $6,889,000.
The total cost here: $7,964,000.
The original project cost estimate from 2007: $2 million.
Inflation-adjusted to 2024 dollars, that $2 million comes to $3,041,361.62 today.
The hold-up started when then-City Councilman Frank Lucente raised issue with the failure of the city to have the 2007 referendum advertised in The News Virginian pursuant to a Waynesboro Circuit Court order.
A copy of the ad was mailed to the paper in time to have the advertisement run 10 days in advance of the election per the court order, but the ad was never published, due to a screw-up at the newspaper.
Hard as it is to believe, the fire station bond, which was approved by the voters with 57.4 percent voting yes, would not come to fruition over that most banal of technicalities, with Lucente leading the way to kill the project, citing concerns over the costs.
That lack of forward thinking from the Republican side of the ledger has us, in 2024, paying more than double to address the needs that we knew back in 2007 were already critical.
All these many years later, people’s lives have been put at risk because of Lucente’s penny-wise, pound-foolish “leadership.”
The new station will allow the city fire department the ability to respond to calls on the western side of the city within the targeted response time of 5 minutes, 20 seconds an estimated 90 percent of the time.
Calls answered on the western part of the city from the current station, located at 300 W. Broad St., adjacent to the downtown district, hit this objective only 35 percent of the time, according to a city government staff report.
But, hey, that Lucente guy saved us $2 million in 2007.
So what if only a third of the western half of the city, which is where the core of our business is based, in addition to being home to thousands in the Pelham, Red Top Orchard and Country Club neighborhoods, falls within the targeted fire response time?
And also, you know, so what if building the station now costs us more than double what it would have if the Republicans had just done what the voters told them to do?
Keep all of this in mind when you vote between now and Nov. 5, by the way.
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Chris Graham
