La Crosse council approves recommendations on plans for fifth fire station, replacing three others

Recommendations that could mean massive changes for the La Crosse Fire Dept. have been approved in principle.

The city council, Thursday, overwhelmingly agreed to recommendations from a task force that calls for, among other things, adding a fifth fire station in La Crosse.

Those recommendations are the basis for what will be a decades-long master plan for modernizing fire facilities.

They also aren’t something supported by city council president Martin Gaul, the lone vote against the plan.

“We do need to have a new station built on the south end of town, however, the question for me, has always been and remains whether that actually needs to be a fifth station,” Gaul said at Thursday night’s meeting.

The plan also calls for tearing down and relocating current fire stations, which is kind of a dumb idea, according Gaul.

“I think for us to discount automatically using sites we already have is a mistake,” Gaul said.

City council member Gary Padesky also cannot support relocating three of the four current stations.

“I just don’t understand why we’re looking to spend money on acquiring land when we have land available,” said Padesky, who abstained from voting on the proposal but said he opposed it.

Another recommendation having another public safety building dedicated to housing the fire, police and inspection departments.

The recommendations still need to be worked into a final plan by city staff. There’s currently no cost estimate or timeline to put the recommendations into action.