ASHEVILLE — City and airport officials will move forward with talks over a joint fire station that could serve a growing area of South Asheville.
The Asheville Regional Airport Authority has instructed staff to keep working with Asheville city officials and report back in 60 days on extra expenses that would come from having non-airport workers in secured areas, traffic rerouting or other issues.
Asheville wants to share a new airport to cut response times to nearby residences and businesses. Those times now are some of the city's slowest, Fire Chief Scott Burnette said.
The move last week to continue talks followed a heated exchange between City Manager Gary Jackson and Airport Director Lew Bleiweis.
Bleiweis told the airport board in a memo that Jackson shouted a profanity at him during a meeting in July and said he acted in a threatening way.
Jackson called part of that account “a fairy tale” and said he was upset because the airport director didn't want to proceed on the station.
In a meeting Friday, Chairman David Hillier expressed frustration over the events.
“It's unfortunate that this situation has gotten to the state that it has,” Hillier said. “Clearly, so far, more heat than light has been shed on this.”
The city and airport disagree over whether airport public safety staff would have morale problems working alongside better-paid city firefighters and whether the city would be paying its fair share.
Authority members agreed it was important to cut emergency response times around Airport Road. A new station would do that, and a joint venture would save taxpayers an estimated $2.5 million for stand-alone city station, Burnette said.
Regarding morale problems, the chief pointed to the city's joint station with Skyland firefighters.
Bleiweis, though, said Skyland firefighters told him that relationship had not always been seamless.
The airport director also said cuts in costs or response times might not come so easily because of special security measures required at airports and that any missteps in how the station was built or used would risk losing federal assistance.
“We could lose 100 percent of that funding for that firehouse,” he said.
Source: http://www.citizen-times.com
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