There may be a better way to upgrade Acton’s fire and ambulance response capability than by building the new North Acton Fire Station and closing the Central Station. Keeping the Central Station open and renovating all three existing stations may be more effective and would cost less that the North Acton Fire Station proposed by the FEATG (Fire and EMS Advisory Task Group). Acton citizens need to consider this issue before voting on it at the spring Town Meeting.

The FEATG plan will move Acton’s ambulance to North Acton and close the Central Station. This will extend the one ambulance medical response time to most of the rest of Acton. The optimal ambulance response time for all of Acton with one ambulance would favor the alternative, that is, that the ambulance remains at Central Station.

The same conclusion would apply if and when Acton gets a second ambulance, which is a growing priority. Medical calls now outnumber fire calls 12 to 1, and will outnumber fire 20 to 1 in ten years, so a second ambulance makes sense. This is particularly true since Acton’s fastest growing demographic is its seniors, and that is the group that relies on ambulances the most.

In the long run, the best plan may be to keep any second ambulance at Central along with the first, and here is why. Suppose for a moment there is a second medical call, which happens often, while a first Central Station ambulance is on its way to Emerson. Under the FEATG plan the second ambulance would have to come from North Acton, a longer response than necessary to most of Acton. Responding from North Acton instead of from the current location in Central Acton would lengthen the response time.

The Central Station is in an ideal location for any optimal emergency response plan since it seems to make sense to centralize resources in a small town like Acton. The South Acton and West Acton stations were located near Acton’s town borders for historical reasons, which act to spread out limited resources. Moving resources from Central to a North Acton station would spread out resources even more. An optimal plan should try to centralize the resources as much as possible to allow best coverage for any emergency. Spreading the resources further to a North Station would appear to compound the problem.

The cost of renovating the Central Fire Station was estimated at $500,000 in November 2006. This compares to the new North Acton Fire Station estimate of about $4.5M. This would seem to indicate that it will cost less to keep the ambulance at a central location rather than move it to North Acton.

At the State of the Town Meeting on November 13th, Bill Mullin offered the opinion that there seems to be a need to improve the Acton Emergency Response capability, but that the FEATG plan as proposed is less than optimal, and that sentiment seemed to reflect the concerns of many at the meeting. FEATG is preparing a plan for the North Acton Fire Station and will present the details of the station design at two public meetings in early 2008.

There is a lot of well prepared information available that any Acton citizen can access to get informed on this issue and includes: The State of the Town Meeting brochure of November 13, 2007; The State of the Town Meeting brochure of November 20, 2006; a Power Point presentation by the Fire Chief titled: “Proposed North Acton Fire/EMS Station September 25, 2007,” consisting of seventy nine slides. Any Acton Citizen can ask further questions of the FEATG at featg@acton-ma.gov or the Board of Selectmen at bos@acton-ma.gov.

In summary, the FEATG was established to design and build a new North Acton Fire Station. Acton should ask FEATG to take the time to answer the question: can Acton improve the emergency response capability in a way that is less expensive than building the new North Acton Fire Station?

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