Lehigh fire dept. to merge with Hillsboro
The Lehigh Fire Department will be alone no longer.
At its regular biweekly meeting Tuesday evening, the Hillsboro City Council gave the OK to merge the Lehigh Fire Department with the Hillsboro Fire Department.
The city will now discuss the move with the City of Lehigh to get its approval.
The proposal would make Lehigh's fire station a satellite or branch station for Hillsboro, said fire chief Ben Steketee. But in reality, Hillsboro firefighters have been covering the Lehigh area for some time with a "handshake" agreement, he said.
Steketee said that the new arrangement would bring better leadership and morale to the Lehigh fire volunteers, who are in favor of the move.
"They are anxious to move ahead," he said. "Obviously there are things to work out."
Lehigh has some equipment, but their pumper trucks haven't been tested, Steketee said.
But the new situation should help insurance rates in the area, he said.
The cities now need to work through the "paper trail" involved in merging things, said City Administrator Steve Garrett.
"Half your battle is certificates and keeping your paperwork up," he said.
In other council business:
— The city has sold $400,000 in bonds to help finance the Main Street project.
A bid was accepted Tuesday from Commerce Bank of Kansas City.
The bonds will mature on Oct. 1, 2013. For Commerce Bank, the average annual rate of interest will be 2.94 percent, yielding a total of $72,083 in interest over the nearly 10-year period.
— The city plans to refund and reissue bonds originally given in 1998 when the city bought Hillsboro Community Medical Center from Salem, Inc.
The bonds are being reissued in order to take advantage of current interest rates that are much lower than those issued five years ago.
According to the current debt schedule, the city would pay an interest rate between 5.2 percent and 6.25 percent until the bonds mature in 2018. But under the new schedule, interest rates would vary from 2.5 to 4.75.
The city opted to reduce their yearly principal payments and thereby save between $7,000 and $10,000 each year — money that will go toward the hospital.
When the deal is done, the city will have refunded $1.18 million in bonds and reissued them again for $1.21 million — a slight increase in order to cover the cost of reissuing them.
— The council gave the OK to annex property in north Hillsboro. The land runs from the AMPI property on the west to Adams Street and faces U.S. Highway 56.
In a recent council meeting, the city purchased the electrical service to this area from Westar. The zone includes highway-front property recently bought by the Hillsboro Development Corporation.
