Brooke-Alvinston Councillors Frank Nemcek and Jamie Armstrong want to try to buy the Inwood fire hall instead of building something new.

It’s a return to a position brought up in 2019, while the municipality was trying to negotiate a new lease with the Inwood Firemen’s Association, which owns the hall. Those negotiations fell flat and the municipality moved the fire equipment out of the hall on January 1.

Since then, council has been talking about building a small station, possibly attached to the Inwood library, to serve the community. It also engaged a fire consulting service which said the community was well served by the Alvinston department and a new hall was not needed. Firehouse 33 suggested an emergency medical response team was needed in Inwood first.

But current fire chief, Jeff McArthur, seemed to disagree, advocating for a fire hall in the community in a report to council. Both Nemcek and Armstrong agreed with McArthur during a special meeting Monday and took the issue one step further.

Armstrong suggested a new building would cost between $440,000 and $600,000 and he said it would take over a year to get the hall ready.

“We could have no coverage or we could work out a deal with the Inwood Firemens’ Association where the municipality takes over the Inwood hall,” he says noting there is a lot of interest in the idea.

Armstrong suggested the municipality could take the $100,000 set aside for the new building and upgrade the hall. “We could own that and we could get the trucks back in there almost immediately.”

Nemcek agreed. “I would like to buy back the old fire hall,” he says. “We could buy it at a reasonable price and bring it up-to-date.”

Mayor Dave Ferguson pointed out the association was asked about that before the equipment left the hall, but didn’t respond.

Nemcek suggested the municipality should “make the first move” and talk to the association about the idea “otherwise were sitting on our hands and nothing is getting done.”

Councillor Wayne Deans, who was a firefighter in Inwood, says there is a meeting planned with some of the senior members of the organization in the next few weeks and the idea of selling the hall will be discussed.

Brooke-Alvinston’s plans for Inwood are also in limbo after Dawn-Euphemia decided to study the possibility of cancelling its contract with Inwood to cover part of its community.

The area Inwood firefighters covered only had four calls in the last four years. It costs the municipality $18,000 a year to pay Inwood to do it.

Brooke-Alvinston council plans to see the outcome of the Dawn-Euphemia study – coming in late July – and the outcome of the Inwood Firemans’ Association meeting before moving forward with a decision.