Patience is waning within South Whidbey Fire/EMS’s leadership ranks over continual permitting delays concerning the district’s planned new headquarters in Bayview.

Officials say months have turned into years, and complaints about the sluggish process has rarely produced results. Currently, the district has been waiting since November for what they believe is a rather simple short plat amendment, which is one of the final boxes that need to be checked before the South Whidbey can begin traversing the building permit process.

Frustrations within the fire district are nearing a boiling point. Commissioners complained about the delays during the board’s regularly scheduled June meeting and Fire Chief Rusty Palmer was no less pointed in recent interviews with The Record.

“We’re almost on a decade plan for this project; we just don’t understand why it takes so long,” Chief Rusty Palmer said.

The Bayview fire station process has been ongoing for nearly 10 years; the property where the site is slated to sit was bought in 2008.

“I don’t know why it’s taken so long, but it seems to be a very long time,” Palmer said.

Island County Planning Office Manager Paula Bradshaw says the county is waiting for the approval decision to be written. She says South Whidbey Fire/EMS is second on their priority list.

Whilst the district is awaiting approval of the plat amendment, it has started to look into financing for the project. Palmer said the district is currently looking at bonds to pay for the $6 million project. A special meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, June 28 for the district to listen to a presentation regarding bonds for the project. It was held after press time and could not be reported on for this story.

During the fire district’s June meeting, Commissioner Kenon Simmons complained that the delays may be eating up tax dollars, and speculated the long wait may have something to do with changes in personnel over the years within Island County Planning and Community Development.

“The county has been super inefficient and maybe it’s because we have gone through multiple planning directors,” Simmons said. “I don’t know exactly how many, but it’s been quite a few.”

At this point in the process, South Whidbey is most likely looking at the Bayview station being built by 2018. If all the stars line up and the final site plan is approved tomorrow, then the district may be able to finish the building by 2017, Palmer said.

“I don’t see that we’ll be under construction this year, in the best possible case,” he said.

Palmer said the frustration is based in continual delays. He said it took three years to get a conditional use permit, and only after the board sent a letter to the county commissioners inquiring about the delay. A permit was issued a short time later, he said.

Similarly, Palmer said county planning officials told him this week that the plat amendment would likely be issued by Friday; a Record reporter began inquiring about the delay last week. Palmer said if they don’t get it, he’ll be recommending the fire commissioners send another letter to the board of county commissioners.

“We’re all patient people, but this has tested that patience,” he said.

The lot purchased by the district for the Bayview fire station is located on 5577 Bayview Road, just east of Good Cheer Food Bank and Thrift Store near the intersection of Bayview Road and Marshview Avenue.

Palmer says once the district gets to the building permit phase, things will start moving quickly. The building phase is the next step.

Palmer and Simmons said the district needs a new headquarters for a multitude of reasons, the largest being that the district’s leaders are currently operating out of a station as opposed to an administrative building.

There currently is no training ground for South Whidbey firefighters and EMTs, and the current Bayview station is outdated and too small to host the administrative side of operation, according to Palmer. The South End has also seen an exponential increase in 911 calls, as Simmons says there hasn’t been a year where the numbers decreased from the previous year. The district is now running 2,400 calls a year, and are on course to surpass 2,500 in 2016.

“We just need a place to be able to do our jobs as well as we can,” Simmons said.