YOUR TURN: Fire station vote says a lot about Dennis
The town of Dennis had an election Tuesday to ratify the Proposition 2½ override that will funda new fire station on the northside. This has been a big issue in town for a long time. The picturesque little white fire station across from Carlton Hall was built for the volunteer fire department, and really is just a very large garage.
The electrical system, the layout, the staff quarters — all are inadequate and need to be replaced. A new fire house was designed and passed town meeting after severe vetting by the selectmen, finance committee and general public.
The first complaint was that the polls were only open from noon to 6 p.m. It was an affront to working people. But there was early absentee voting, and 6 p.m. is actually a little better than the regular town hall hours.
Then various beach sticker critics complained that, a) their taxes pay for this, too, so they should have access to the resident-only parking lots, or b) if we stopped spending money on fripperies like a new fire station, we could afford to let more people have the lower cost resident beach stickers and that is what is really important to the town.
The third complaint was that the new senior center was inadequate, that it didn’t have all the cool stuff that people really needed, like the swimming pool in the original plan, and borrowing more money for a fire station just showed that the day to day needs of the residents were neglected in favor of a palatial new building, when the old one probably could have been upgraded.
And how many fires did we even have anyway?
What gets lost in that analysis is that the fire department is the first line of medical services across the Cape. Nearly 1,000 paramedics and EMTs also serve as firefighters across the Cape. Over 25 years ago, the Cape and Island Emergency Medical Services began to work with firefighters to make them first responders to medical emergencies.
Unlike police departments whose jurisdictions stop at town boundaries, fire departments have mutual aid contracts with one another, so a Yarmouth Port fire engine might also respond to a transformer fire behind Captain Frosty’s in Dennis, with a Brewster team on call if more help is needed.
In the same way, if there is a medical emergency on Underpass Road in Brewster, the response would likely come from the Harwich Fire Department, which would be closest. To some extent, Brewster and Yarmouth have been propping up the medical services on Route 6A for the town of Dennis when the crush of traffic on Route 134 delays the response from the fire station on Route 28.
What also gets lost is the need for electronic sophistication in order to store and maintain diagnosticand other medical equipmentin a modern-day fire house on Cape Cod.
It's important for Dennis to create a facility that upholds its end of the regional mutual aid tradition.
The fire station override passed easily Tuesday with an official vote of 724 to 153. And the result says a great deal about the town of Dennis.
Cynthia Stead is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: dennis election approves funding for new fire station
