It’s back to the drawing board on plans for a third fire station in Burlington.
In 2023, voters approved a referendum for spending up to $7.3 million on a new fire station in the northwest part of the city in order to meet the national standard of a four-minute response time throughout the city.
The scope of work included construction of the new fire station with the goal of improving service coverage and modernizing fire department infrastructure.
The city received 14 bid packages last month for the project, but they all came back too high.
So the city council approved a resolution rejecting all bids.
The city is now scaling back the scope of the project.
Fire Chief Nathan Toops said he’s disappointed the bids had to be rejected, but he’s confident the project will move forward.
“We’ve scaled the project back so much that it’s really affected every bid package. This is just the smart direction now, to go back out for bid hopefully and be way more prepared than we were leading up to today,” Toops said.
Mayor Jon Billups said he, too, was disappointed but didn’t feel like there was any other choice but to reject the bids.
“We started this thing and we will finish it. We will find viable solutions,” Billups said. “We know we need it, and the citizens said they need it. So we’re still committed.”
The resolution approved by the council directs city staff to evaluate alternatives and consider the next appropriate steps for the project.
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