Public comment sows Station 13 discussion at Glenview Village Board meeting
Tuesday's Glenview Village Board meeting breezed along nice and tidy.
Barriers to facilitate outdoor dining at places like The Glen would return later this month and stay into November. Trustees discussed "parklets," outdoor dining in nontraditional spaces.
A couple of places were cleared for liquor licenses.
Proposed rates dropped for two of three categories of water and sewer meters.
Easy peasy. Then came the section devoted to public comment.
Nine comments, at 3 minutes apiece, combined to take up nearly half of a remote meeting that lasted a little over an hour. Each speaker cited an issue that's captivated quite a few Glenview residents, the status of Fire Station 13, 831 E. Lake Ave.
Officially the station isn't yet closing, but opposition terms it that after a Feb. 2 village release announced it would "reallocate Station 13 resources based on safety, fiduciary responsibility and utilization data ..." Glenview has four other stations. The plan was tentatively set for April 1.
As presented in its meeting on Sept. 15, 2020, the board was working off evaluations from a working group of village and fire department personnel that selected a consultant, Fitch & Associates, to provide an extensive study.
Using data from 2014-18 the study found that while some improvements could be made, notably by using a Medical Priority Dispatch System, overall the Glenview Fire Department was an exemplary force.
Fitch also found factoids like Station No. 13 responded to calls for 43 minutes over a 24-hour shift. That the station improved system performance by just 1.25% to meet a 6-minute travel time, a gauge of "overall effectiveness" that happens 96% of the time in Glenview (actually 4.8 minutes averaging medical and fire responses in 2018). Or that Station 13 had one call for overnight ambulance response every four to five days.
Opponents of the reallocation, one of seven options the board considered in February, might suggest that any margin or any response is a health benefit, one of the beliefs Glenview Professional Firefighters Association Local 4186 has voiced in arguing against the move.
"This decision is going to cost more lives," said one of the three active firefighters, plus a retired battalion chief, who called in to Tuesday's meeting.
The former battalion chief was concerned taking the station offline would add stress to Glenview's busiest station, No. 6, also on the village's east side at 1215 Waukegan Road.
A couple of callers asked to pause the decision for further consideration. One of them was Andrew Duffy, a Glenbrook South student who has organized a March 6 rally in front of the station to attempt to save it.
Village President Jim Patterson explained that the intention is to move call volume from Station No. 6 to another station, and move more calls already served by Station No. 13 to No. 14, 2250 Patriot Blvd.
"That would free up the likelihood of multiple calls out of (Station) 6. After we move the ambulance volume, much of it over to 14, it changes the equation fairly significantly," he said.
He also intimated that the entire board has a stake in this, all being Glenview residents. "I would say none of us take this lightly, and we all believe that this is safe," Patterson said.