@D9We drove by there again yesterday and I was like man that looks like fun!Thanks for all you emergency personnel do.. paid and voluntary!

If you'd like to try it, just call the department main number: 281-852-2181 and ask for Chief Mulligan and I'll arrange it. It belongs to you so you should get to give it a try!

@B12Fan Additionally, the building was financed over a short period of time at an interest rate of around 2% or less. The annual debt service is factored into the operating budget and no service delivery was affected by the purchase. Please keep in mind that the building this new facility replaced was 38 years old and dysfunctional for our expanded service model. As many of its inhabitants are your neighbors who selflessly give their time to respond to emergencies in the district, we chose to give them a proper place to serve.

@AtascoResident The previous aerial apparatus was 75 feet with an effective reach of 55 to 65 feet depending on placement. Aerial manufacturers build in certain increments so it's not like we could buy something specifically to fit our buildings exactly so we had to make a choice. The old ladder truck was manufactured by a company that has been in and out of business many times since the truck was purchased. That company does not currently exist in any recognizable fashion. I say this to bring light to the increasing level of difficulty we were having getting parts for a truck that was showing its age. We were waiting months for our service tech to find parts, which left the district unprotected. Since we must have this type of equipment to meet the requirement of our ISO Public Protection Class, a 3 which keeps your insurance rates down, we chose the larger truck. The thought process was that since we were probably only going to get one chance at choosing correctly and we don't know exactly what the future holds by way of commercial property, we went with the tallest we could get to cover our bets. The platform at the end has bee invaluable at several fires since we took delivery of the truck and that working platform is safer for our members as well. I can assure you we looked seriously at renovating the original station, but there was no way to make it hurricane rated and the way the building had been added onto over the years made space planning inside unrealistic. The new building is hurricane rated, which means that we will be able to house up to 15 people there during a storm and be ready to respond immediately following to your emergency.

@AtascoResident The reason we have two story fire stations is that we spent less on the land when we had to purchase it. I could go into the ISO rating again, but I've already covered that. The spacing of the current stations is based on those ISO requirements and done in an effort to reduce response times. To get the same equipment and personnel into a single story station would have cost more than twice as much when you figure in the land purchase that would have been required. As it is, the new station was built on land that was already available to the ESD and cost you nothing. I'm not sure what you assessed valuation is, but you're getting a deal with ESD 46 as previously stated. As a point of order AVFD responded to over 4600 calls for assistance in 2015 and in March we responded to almost 600 calls, which is a record high for us. So our run volume is steadily increasing since 2006.

@SteelerNation Thank you for your support. I will work diligently to ensure that we deserve it.

@timbom I am not certain which call you are speaking of as I don't recall us sending fire apparatus to 1960 and 290, ever. We have responded to wildfires in Waller & Montgomery counties, but that was in 2011 and nowhere near 1960 & 290. We did send our state funded AMBUS to the floods two weeks ago, but that is covered by other funding mechanisms. Would you please refresh my memory on the 1960 & 290 call.