It was decided by city council more than a year ago, but some Minnow Lake residents still want the city to review the planned relocation of their community’s emergency services station.
Reflecting on a 300-name petition to this effect, community member John Lindsay presented on the subject during Wednesday night’s Minnow Lake Community Action Network meeting.
“We want to call on our councillors to review all aspects of fire services, and in particular, Minnow Lake,” he said.
The city’s plan will see the Minnow Lake fire and paramedic station relocated approximately two kilometres north of its current site at 144 Second Ave., to a new property in the vicinity of the junction of The Kingsway and Falconbridge Road.
Area residents’ chief concern is that relocating the station two kilometres north will mean longer response times for certain properties — namely, those in the south end of the Minnow Lake neighbourhood. Lindsay pulled up GoogleMaps travel time data to help illustrate his point.
(Missing from Lindsay’s criticism is a city-commissioned analysis of response data over a five-year period which showed an overall positive impact on response times when the Minnow Lake station is relocated, when factoring in all affected properties.)
“Fire Services refuses to answer our questions,” Lindsay said, noting that the city declined an invitation to attend Wednesday’s meeting.
“We are respectfully declining your request to meet to further debate this matter,” Greater Sudbury Fire and Paramedic Services Chief Joseph Nicholls wrote in an email to the event’s organizers, which was forwarded to Sudbury.com.
“City council decided on this issue over a year ago, providing staff with clear direction to construct a station at a new location to replace the current Minnow Lake station.”
There were 11 public information sessions held in the spring of 2023, Nicholls pointed out. This included a sparsely attended meeting at St. Charles College to discuss the Minnow Lake station. There was also an online survey to gather information from residents who could not take part in a session.
All of this was presented to city council in July 2023 to help inform their decisions, which among other things included proceeding with a new Minnow Lake station.
Although a handful of people in the Minnow Lake neighbourhood appear to be passionate, few were interested during last year’s public consultation process. Of feedback received, less than one per cent concerned the Minnow Lake, Garson and Falconbridge stations, with the bulk of responses centring around stations in Wahnapitae, Skead, Beaver Lake, Coniston and Hanmer.
Sudbury.com reached out to city communications staff on Wednesday to request a phone interview for the following day to help fact check whatever came up during that evening’s Minnow Lake Community Action Network meeting, as well as receive a response.
“The city respectfully declines the interview as this is a decided matter,” they responded, pointing to the July 11, 2023, city council meeting at which the new Minnow Lake emergency services station was approved.
Pressed further by Sudbury.com after the meeting, the city issued a slightly longer statement.
“Council carefully considered and decided this matter following its receipt of expert analysis and after a substantial community engagement process,” according to the statement.
“The basis for the city's plans includes actual call data and modeling software to not only determine station locations that reflect actual experience, but also to minimize response times across the entire municipality.”
“Choices to remodel, combine or replace specific stations reflect not only efforts to produce the most favourable call response rates, but also make the best use of limited taxpayer funds.”
The city’s emergency services infrastructure review was largely informed by a report by Operational Research in Health Ltd., which analyzed five years of call and response data.
This report concluded that relocating the Minnow Lake station would shave six seconds from response time in the local fire beat, and 20 seconds across all career areas in the 90th percentile times (the time in which 90 per cent of responses are made).
“Minnow Lake station is the only career station where the ideal site is a significant distance from the current station location,” according to the report.
During the July 11, 2023, meeting at which city council approved a new Minnow Lake station, Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc tabled an unsuccessful motion for the station to be located south of The Kingsway, and therefore still within the Minnow Lake neighbourhood.
Nicholls argued that the station needed to be situated in an ideal location in relation to response times, and that city council shouldn’t limit their options.
“My only perspective is that we’re trying to place the station in the most ideal location to respond to the calls it needs to respond to,” Nicholls said. “It is a station that is in a system of stations that respond all through the community.”
Renovating the existing Minnow Lake station was estimated at the time to cost $9.75 million, and a new build in an ideal location to the north was estimated at $8.4 million.
In tender documents issued earlier this year, the city updated the new build estimate at $9.2 million, with new Minnow Lake and Garson stations slated to be built by the end of 2026.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
