Jefferson City Council to consider funding new fire training tower
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
Jefferson City leaders are weighing whether to fund new training equipment for firefighters.
The Jefferson City Council meets at 6 p.m. Monday. On the agenda is a bill that would finance a training tower for the Jefferson City Fire Department.
The estimated cost of the tower is $1.8 million. WHP Training Towers, the company the city would contract, offered to cover $32,000 for the cost of tearing down the existing tower. The bill proposes using funds from existing sales taxes and $500,000 from Cole County ARPA funds and $1 million from Jefferson City ARPA funds. The rest would come from sales taxes already in place.
"This is money that the city and county already have. Some of it is in ARPA money and some of it is in capitol improvement sales tax funds," said Jefferson City Fire Chief Matt Schofield.
According to the council meeting packet, the tower would be built at 2304 Hyde Park Road. It would be a five-story tower and a two-story residential fire training facility. The goal of these towers is to simulate working on multistory buildings, like apartment complexes and hotels.
Other agencies -- local law enforcement and emergency medical services -- would also use the tower for training.
"We do training every shift," Schofield said. "It helps us to hone our skills, to not only make sure that we're "There's three different areas that we've identified for burn in class A, which is traditional wood and paper and pallets and that kind of thing," Schofield said. "And then one area that would be class B, which is propane gas fed. We currently don't have anything that does class B or gas-fed fires in a burn facility in this area."
Schofield said the existing training tower, at the same location the new one would be built, is getting too old.
"About five years ago we had a study done that actually indicated that there are some major repairs needed and some structural concerns with the burn room in particular," Schofield said.
