Archive: Around Town

Lansing Fire Commissioners got an A on their fiscal report card in their monthly meeting Tuesday night.  Mimi Thuesen of the accounting firm Ciaschi, Dietershagen, Little, Mickelson and Co. LLP presented an audit report that shows the district exercises good fiscal responsibility.  She reported that the district has $3.3 million in assets and only $45,000 in liabilities, with a building reserve of $700,000 and cash assets of $1 million.

That money is in anticipation of building a new fire house to replace the one on Oakcrest Road in the Village of Lansing. "We always look ahead," says District Treasurer George Gesslein.  "We establish reserves as fast as we can develop the cash to do it.  We do anticipate that probably in two years we're going to be building down there."

Gesslein estimates the fire house will cost about $2 million.  The current firehouse is too small for modern equipment, and is of limited use in an area of Lansing that generates 50% of the district's emergency calls.  There is not enough space there to house large fire trucks or even to turn them around.  While the Fire District owns property across the street from the existing facility, the Village prefers they not build there, as it is a residential area.  Instead Village officials have offered a piece of land behind the Village office.  Negotiations on the details of the land are going slowly, and architect Dennis Ross of Pacheco Ross Architects, P.C. has put the project on hold until officials decide for sure that the new facility will be located there.


Meanwhile the district is saving money to offset the cost.  "I typically try to get about half into reserves before the project is built and let the taxpayers pay for the other half after it's built," says Gesslein.  "It will reduce the burden to the taxpayers."

With other projects on the horizon, not all that money is slated for the firehouse.  "We don't have quite half yet, but we're working on it," says Gesslein.  "We're doing it so it will have limited impact on the taxpayers.  If you just gradually accumulate it, it doesn't hit anybody too hard in their pocket book."  He estimates that the remainder of the cost will mean at most five cents per thousand dollars of assessed value on the tax rate by the time the firehouse is built.

Thuesen said that her firm found only two minor procedural improvements the District should enact.  These involved enforcing regulations already implemented such as keeping better track of credit card charges.  All in all she said the District is managing its assets very well.

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