- The Kenton County Fire Chiefs’ Association updated Kenton County mayors on the progress of a joint fire training facility this week
- The association estimates the remaining cost to build the facility to be between $2.6 million and $3.4 million
- The mayors were open to helping and proposed municipal bonding as a means to get more funding
The Kenton County Fire Chiefs’ Association is asking cities in Kenton County to help fund a joint fire training facility for the area’s fire departments and districts.
The center is already partially funded, and the association brought their ask to the meeting of the Kenton County Mayors Group on Saturday morning. The project aims to establish a shared fire training facility – and possibly a police training facility, as well – for the county’s various fire fighting organizations.
The fire chiefs association had presented to the mayors group earlier this year, and Saturday’s meeting served as an opportunity for the association to update the county’s elected executives and ask for their help.
The tone of the meeting was jocular, and the mayors seemed open to working with the association to help the project come to fruition.
“How can you all help us fund it?” asked Independence Assistant Fire Chief Nick Russell.
“Time to go,” joked Covington Mayor Ron Washington.
“Motion to adjourn,” said Fort Mitchell Mayor Jude Hehman.
Attendees at the meeting laughed, and the discussion about possible funding mechanisms continued.
The project aims to replace the former countywide training center, the Wietholter Training Center located on Boron Drive in Covington. It closed in the spring of 2022 after Rumpke purchased the property. Rumpke planned to redevelop the land without reconstructing a new fire training facility on the site. Rumpke eventually opened an $8.2 million transfer station off Boron Drive in 2024.
The now-shuttered Wieholter Training Facility opened in 1972. Originally, the facility was available to the Covington Fire Department for use as a fire training center. In 1982, the City of Covington, Kenton County Fiscal Court and Kenton County Fire Chiefs Association reached an agreement to hand over operation of the training center to the fire chief’s association, although the city maintained ownership of the building.
The old center had a robust suite of training facilities, including a smoke building for search training, a high angle ropes course, a live fire training building, a pumper testing pit and other facilities that departments around the county could use to train their people.
After the land on which the old center sat was sold, Judge/Executive Kris Knochelmann helped negotiate a buyout from the land’s owners for the association’s remaining lease for $1 million. A committee within the Fire Chiefs Association then formed to scout for a new location.
The land where the association hopes to establish a new center is located on Madison Pike near a CSX railway. On Aug. 21, the association approved spending of up to $600,000 to make the site ready for building. This entailed installation of infrastructure for utilities and sewers.
The association has also completed engineering plans for the site, and the Kentucky Fire Commission has awarded the association a grant to build a live fire container prop for training by the end of the year – they will lose the money if they fail to build said prop by the end of 2025.
The association has already bid out the work and awarded it to Klassic Industries. They estimate completing the project, over and above the $600,000 already committed, to cost between $2.6 million and $3.4 million. The association is currently working on getting the proper permits to build.
The Northern Kentucky Police and Sheriff’s Training Center, which currently lacks a central location or dedicated office, has also agreed to help the association seek funding with the hopes they could also eventually use the facility for police training.
“Basically, all the dirt work is done, ready to go to put a building on it,” Russell said, “and we’re at $2.6 to $3.4 million. So, the Fire Chiefs’ Association is all in with this money they have; that’s a million dollars. Like I said, we’re going to spend $600,000 of it already to do this.”
Russell said grants to bankroll such a project are rare – the Kentucky Fire Commission, from which they’ve already gotten a grant to build the training prop, doesn’t have the funds to for a potentially $2 million $3 million investment of this kind. Moreover, the association, which is a nonprofit, gets most its income from member dues. This amounted to only about $6,000 a year, so they weren’t going to be able to pay for the remaining construction on their own.
Washington pitched the idea of using municipal bonding to fund the construction. Russell admitted he was not knowledgeable in how that worked, but based on conversations at the meeting, if cities agreed to bond out the construction, they would have to work the debt repayments into their budget.
“If each community knew, you know, this is what we’re supposed to pay over the next 10 or 15 years, I think that’d be the closer way to do it,” Washington said. “Then we could put it in our budget that, you know, I’m supposed to put this in my budget for the next X amount of years.”
Park Hills Mayor Kathy Zembrodt, who has a background in lending, volunteered to help the association investigate its options.
No official action was taken at the meeting, but “you got people in this room here that would be glad to help,” Washington said to Russell.