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Lino Lakes, Minnesota – Fire Department Analysis Page 30 <br /> <br />Land acquisition would be an estimated $120,000 for a four-acre area. For illustrative purposes, if this <br />construction were financed over 20 years at 3.5%, debt service costs would be $130,212 per year. <br /> <br />Once the structure is complete, the department will require apparatus to fill it. While some of this will <br />likely come from CFD’s existing inventory, the department will still need to make some investment in <br />new apparatus. At the current time, the allocation of CFD assets has not yet been finalized; therefore, our <br />projections must err on the side of assuming that the department will need to purchase most of the <br />apparatus required for providing service. As noted previously, initial estimates for apparatus needs range <br />from $1.5 million to over $3.0 million; assuming that the investment for apparatus amounted to $2.5 <br />million, financed over 15 years at 3.25%, the debt service for new apparatus would be $213,221 annually. <br /> <br />Additionally, the department will need to recruit and train volunteers for the new force. To maintain its <br />current level of service, we estimate that the new department will require 42 personnel. The proposed <br />structure would include a Career Fire Chief and Career Fire Marshal/Training Officer, and 40 paid-on- <br />call personnel to include a Captain, a Lieutenant, and 18 firefighters at each station. The exact titles are <br />subject to further discussion; this model was shown in the organization chart under Option 6 above. <br /> <br />The cost of training a new recruit to become a certified firefighter would include not only the cost of <br />classes, but also the cost of firefighter time in this mandatory training. This cost would be in the range of <br />$3,000 to $5,000 per recruit. If we use the low end estimated cost of $3,000, then 40 new recruits would <br />result in $120,000 in training costs. The new force will also require turnout gear, as noted in the previous <br />section. At $6,000 per set, the purchase of 40 sets of gear would represent an estimated cost of $240,000. <br />These costs represent something of a worst-case scenario, in that they assume that no personnel or <br />equipment would be coming from current CFD resources. We do not know what the transition will result <br />in, so we are taking a conservative approach in our cost estimating. <br /> <br />In addition to the startup costs related to the new station and the new force, there would be the regular <br />operational expenses associated with running two stations. Based on CFD’s 2014 budget, and working <br />from the assumption that the new station would see operating expenses roughly equivalent to those of the <br />current station, we estimate that annual operating costs would be approximately $590,000 annually. A <br />snapshot of projected revenues and expenses is shown in Table 4. If the City chooses to move forward <br />with one or more of the options, we recommend that city officials refine the assumptions in Table 4 more <br />thoroughly, and revisit them regularly as the project proceeds. <br /> <br />36