Summit Fire & EMS "asking for patience" as growing town of Silverthorne still without fire station

It was always the plan to build a fire station in Silverthorne, but not necessarily right now. 

"This has been a lightning rod issue here just in recent weeks and we understand that fortunately, we are not sensing this is an adversarial thing, everyone is striving to do the same thing. Let's get a fire station built and staffed here," Steve Lipsher with Summit Fire & EMS said Wednesday.

Residents have been vocal about their disappointment in a lack of a station. It's enough that Summit Fire and EMS is searching for ways to expedite their three-to-five-year plan into an "oh shoot, we gotta build next year" plan. 

"Their concern is the response time that would take to bring a unit from Dillion into Silverthorne, especially with the congestion we see around the I-70 interchange," assistant town manager of Silverthorne Mark Leidel explained.

Dillion is the closest station for a response, but as more and more homes are built further north in town (as many were this year) the growing number of citizens who have to hope the intersection beneath I-70 isn't clogged when they call 911 is growing. 

Silverthorne used to have an administrative building in town but moved out of it three or four years ago. If residents of Silverthorne are pointing to that as abandonment, Summit Fire & EMS said that's a bit misguided.  

"It was a popular misconception that it was a response station," Lipsher said. "All of our responses for the town of Silverthorne and north initiated out of our fire station in Dillion on the other side of Interstate 70."

So while the way calls get sent out hasn't changed, the number of residents has. Lipsher said the building this summer of 2022 has been "insane."

"We have seen development in Silverthorne really explode in the last year. Something that had always been sleepy, and we would see one or two things happening at once... this year we have got like, a dozen and a half happening, major developments, hotels, condos, apartments, all kinds of things," Lipsher said. 

"It is clear that Silverthorne has been discovered, the traffic has absolutely...gotten worse."

Now it comes to what exactly they are building and what they can afford right now since Summit Fire & EMS agrees a faster timetable is needed. Lipsher pointed to supply chain and construction crew issues as part of the issue, but said the main reason they are looking at a bare-bones garage right now for next year instead of a full-blown staffed station is because that's what they have the budget for right now (around $4 million). 

"A fully built out fire station these days for a full response engine crew of four people and then two people with an ambulance... we're talking $8-$10 million dollar range just to build it, then the ongoing expense is about $1 million a year to staff and maintain it," Lipsher said.

"We had a long-range plan and budgeting out for typically 5 years down the road. The train was on the track to build a fire station three to five years out, this year's development was so fast and coming that it really accelerated our need here."

CBS Colorado asked about the potential for taxpayers to have to cough up money for the new station, especially when property taxes were raised with the promise that this station would be built. Lipsher said not for now, at least.

"We have about $4 million in our capital reserves that was slated for ultimately building this fire station, through our budgeting processes, we would stash aside more for this fire station...what happened was this accelerated time frame has caught us and outrun our budget."

"We are not looking at building this beyond what our capital funds allow us to do."