Planning Commission Minutes 2000 05 09

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Cris Brewer, Fire Chief for the Louisville Fire Protection District. Chief Brewer has a responsibility to ensure the safety of not only the citizens of Louisville, but also to the responding firefighters that go on calls and their apparatus. There are between 45 and 50 volunteer firefighters. They are not necessarily in house when a call goes out, they have to respond to the fire station to man the appropriate apparatus. Whenever an alarm goes out there are up to 45 firefighters, or more, responding. Currently the station on Main Street is not very active during the day. Any type of traffic studies done currently have nothing to do with what could be there in the future. The Fire Department’s plan is to get more firefighters to be able to staff both stations 24 hours a day. That would severely change the traffic pattern from the way it is at this time. Chief Brewer believes that combining public motor vehicle activity with emergency response vehicles in a driveway, which appears to be a private driveway regardless of what its legal status is, is not a good idea. There is not enough room there to get the trucks and firefighters in and out with the public there. There is no room for vehicles to pull over. A fire truck pulling in or out of that property takes up the entire 36 feet. That means there cannot be traffic on that driveway and expect it to pass. Chief Brewer does not think that making the driveway a little bit wider will fix the problem. He feels very strong that mixing the public vehicular traffic on this driveway with the existing and potentially expanded future emergency vehicle and fire fighter access traffic is not in the best interest of public safety and firefighter safety. He would recommend and request that the Planning Commission denies approval for this project until a separate access point can be somehow figured out. Chief Brewer went over the turning access with the Planning Commission. Mark Weber, 211 South Tyler Avenue, Louisville, CO 80027. Mr. Weber is presently elected to the Board of Directors for the Louisville Fire Protection District and serves in capacity of President of the Board of Directors. Mr. Weber wanted to make it clear that the only opposition that they have to the project is the shared access of the current and existing driveway located next to Station 1. Mr. Weber voiced all opposition to the proposed joint use of the concrete driveway located next to Station 1 located at 1240 Main Street. The driveway currently sits on property owned by the City of Louisville and in 1993 the Fire Protection District entered into a licensed agreement with the city to construct a driveway for the purpose of enhancing emergency services provided from Station 1. It has been the Board’s position since February of 2000 that shared use of this driveway created a public safety issue. Shared access will ultimately put a firefighter or a firefighting apparatus in direct contact with individuals who use the driveway to enter or exit the proposed business. Sharing access will lead to delayed response times for the Fire Department and create a potential liability scenario that the District is not willing to undertake. These are the reasons that the Louisville Fire Protection District Board of Directors is opposed to the proposed driveway for the proposed project. This is a safety issue. There are safety issues that are going to happen and the District does not feel that they should be required to assume the responsibilities for those actions should this be approved. They would go as far as to look for the applicant to assume all of those 12