Our View: It's a delicate dance with tax burdens

We value our fire protection in Carlton County, and we particularly like the lower home insurance premiums we enjoy thanks to having a fully staffed, 24/7 fire department with an excellent response time here in Cloquet.

But another public building built on public tax dollars may tax our community too much at a time when we’re just not sure what other public buildings may be coming.

In the past few years, Carlton County has built a new public works garage in Barnum and a Human Services building in Cloquet. Cloquet schools built a beautiful new middle school. Other county school districts are facing new building needs. The city of Cloquet bought a building and remodeled it into a new City Hall, and the police moved there from the facilities it shared with the fire department. And now there’s a looming question of how to pay for a new jail that could cost more than $30 million and a firehall with a price tag of more than $10 million.

We don’t argue that CAFD could use a new building. After the police moved, the city handed over the old, previously shared building to the Cloquet Area Fire District, which serves not just Cloquet but also Scanlon, Perch Lake, Brevator and fire protection for the Fond du Lac Reservation. That extra space just isn’t enough, say CAFD officials, especially for vehicles, with the District’s ambulances and fire trucks packed tightly into the garages. It’s an old building with HVAC issues, almost non-existent insulation and a poor sound system that makes fire calls difficult to understand.

But we are very concerned that taxpayers can’t absorb the additional costs at this time.

Thus, our first wish is that the state legislature will decide CAFD is worthy and fund half the costs of a new building, as the state’s first fire district is almost certain to continue growing, and will remain a regional asset.

If that doesn’t happen, we hope CAFD board members will continue to be patient. The need for a new fire hall isn’t urgent. They can make repairs to keep the current building viable until they can secure funding — be it grants, donations from local businesses that rely on the fire protection, and/or funds from the state — to help lessen the burden on local taxpayers.

Firefighters and EMTs are there for us when we need them, we should be there for them. But we can take the time to do this right.