Effingham County commissioners have been asked to reconsider placing a fire station on Goshen Road

Rincon City Manager Wesley Corbitt asked commissioners to think about putting a station out on Hodgeville Road and not on Goshen Road, fearing the planned station would result in too much overlap of coverage.

"I’m a little concerned as a citizen but also as a city manager that we’re building a fire station perhaps that’s going to be a couple of miles from Rincon’s fire station," he said.

Corbitt urged commissioners to place a station out toward Hodgeville Road. The county has plans to build a station on Hodgeville Road, at a cost of $400,000, during fiscal year 2013.

"These stations could be built possibly through talking with us and we could help put a station out at Hodgeville," he said.

County Administrator David Crawley said the county has selected a contractor for the Goshen Road station, which also is expected to house an EMS substation and sheriff’s office substation, but has not signed a contract.

The planned Goshen station, designed at 9,614 square feet, will be a 24-hour station. The land the county acquired also had a well, meaning there would be water service for the station.

"There is some overlap," Crawley said. "There is some overlap everywhere we’ve got a station."

Corbitt said the city hopes to have its ISO rating lowered to a 3 later this year.

"That could branch out to many of our county’s citizens," he said, "and you could also branch out to reach people farther in the southern end of the county than you could if you were on Goshen Road."

One of the reasons the county chose to put a station on Goshen Road was to cover the industrial-zoned tracts near the county line. Without the station, those tracts would have an ISO rating of 10.

"If you go too far to the west, you would be still needing to cover that whole swath," county project manager Adam Kobek said.

Corbitt also urged commissioners to keep the county’s Rincon EMS station close to its current location.

"We would love to see the EMS station stay in the center of Rincon," he said. "There’s a lot of concentration of residences and businesses. We have a personal interest in keeping that EMS (station) where it doesn’t take 10 minutes to get back to the downtown area."

The county also could use money it saves from not building a Goshen station toward some of its other expenses, such as debt retirement, Corbitt added.

"I believe we can save the county some money, that maybe you could use elsewhere," he said. "There’s a lot of opportunity there we could help you with."

Corbitt also said the city may be able to help in some way with providing water and sewer service to property along Old Augusta Road. Commissioners are looking at water and sewer line extensions to Old Augusta Road tracts, which could cost an additional $9 million. Those projects would not be completed for another five years.

"Let us know how we can work together," he said.