March 17, 1989

Firefighters to lobby for station

       Opponents of plans for a new fire station in White River Township have been asked to meet with firefighters on their home turf to discuss the project.  The White River Township Volunteer Fire Department has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday at 7 p.m., in the fire station on Runyon Road, to discuss the plans.  It will be the second meeting on the subject, but the first time the fire department’s side will be heard.

         Officials of the fire department hope the meeting will cool the opposition that surfaced during a meeting last Friday night at North Grove Elementary school.  Neighbors organized that meeting after the fire department unveiled plans for a second fire station, on the Schreckengast farm at 3780 W. Fairview Road.  Fire officials planned to explain their proposal during that meeting, but they left at the request of organizer David Mickel before the meeting began.

         Now, Fire Chief Howard Bennis said, he’d like neighbors to hear the fire department’s side of the story before they go to a zoning hearing next month to oppose the project.  “We just want a chance to talk to them,” Bennis said.  “We can refute just about everything that (Mickel) said last Friday.”  Before the fire station can be built, the fire department must obtain a special exception from residential zoning.  That issue was to be taken up by the Johnson County Board of Zoning Appeals this month, but neighbors were given a continuance to delay the hearing until April.

         Neighbors, led by Mickel, have argued that the fire station will decrease the value of their property.  Bennis said they have been misinformed.  Mickel’s main complaint has been that the 33 acre farm site is more that the fire department needs, and is not worth the $240,000 price that the fire department is paying.  Most of the land that was once part of the farm has been sold off, and the 33 acres that remain lie largely in a flood plain where construction would not be allowed.  The land is just west of the Indiana Railroad tracks, on the north side of Fairview Road.
 
 

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