Four members of the Washington City Council attended a special session meeting Tuesday at the Washington Public Library. Photo by Sally Y. Hart

The City of Washington is preparing to build a new fire station. At their special session meeting Tuesday, the Washington City Council discussed forming a committee to spearhead the effort. City Administrator Brent Hinson explained there are many things that need to be done this calendar year, in order to be ready for construction next year, when the city will have the financing available following the retirement of the new library and downtown streetscape bonds on June 1, 2018. He said, “Basically, once that bond is retired we’ve got the opportunity then, and we’ve been planning for this for five years, to replace that debt with this new debt.”

Hinson explained why a committee is formed, instead of the council making all of the project decisions, “A building project has just hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions small and large to make. If you do it right, you will talk about essentially every aspect of that building at one time or another, and some of those aspects multiple times, that’s just the nature of it if you want to do it right.”

The goal is to appoint an 8-10 person committee at the April 18th council meeting.That committee will likely meet twice monthly during the daytime.