By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A county resident thanked commissioners court members recently for budgeting funds for a new county fire station north of Del Rio.
Paula Smith, a resident of the Lake Ridge Estates northwest of Del Rio, spoke to the court previously about her concerns regarding the lack of a manned fire station in the residential area where she lives. She spoke to the court again on Sept. 25.
Smith told the court in May that her home insurance company had notified her they would no longer insure her home since she lived more than seven miles from a manned fire station.
Smith during the Sept. 25 meeting first asked the court to continue its evening meetings, saying “working class citizens who may want to participate” might find it difficult to take time off from work to attend the meetings if they are held during the day.
Then Smith said she wanted to offer a “thank you.”
“I want to say thank you because I heard through the grapevine that you all allocated some funds to the county fire department (for an additional fire station),” Smith said.
“If you can continue finding money for that, we would really appreciate it, because it definitely is growing out there north of Del Rio,” she added.
County Judge Lewis Owens Jr. confirmed the funding for the additional fire station during an interview with The 830 Times on Friday.
“Since I came in as commissioner (for Precinct 2), we had always talked about another fire station, and we’ve talked about it several times since I’ve been county judge. We just weren’t able to pull the trigger and set aside $1 million like we were able to do this year,” Owens said.
The judge said he used some of the county’s fund balance to allocate about $980,000 in the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 budget for an additional fire station.
“It will be presented to the court, probably during the second meeting in October. . . we will discuss a fire station and a location, just to get an idea what the commissioners think,” Owens said.
He said he believed there is an area where a new station could be sited that would prove most beneficial to the greatest number of county residents.
Owens said he believes a site somewhere between the “Y” formed by the intersection of U.S. Highways 90 and 277 and the State Loop 79 overpass north of Del Rio would be an ideal location for an additional county fire station.
“If we put it in there. . . (it shortens) my distance to get to Val Verde Park Estates, Escondido Estates or even the fires at the Moody Ranch, and it’s still close enough to Lake Ridge and that area where we’re having the most amount of growth,” Owens said.
The county judge said he also included two additional firefighter positions in the 2024-2025 county budget.
“We also included more money for part-timers and more money for volunteers,” he added.
“I would look to our fire chief to see if we could keep the Cienegas fire station manned with somebody, but we’ll do what we can,” he said.
Owens said the 2024-2025 county budget includes funding for six full-time firefighter positions in addition to the fire chief and a clerk. The budget also includes funding for eight part-time firefighters.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
