Board OKs Money for Camarillo Fire Station : Expansion: Supervisors release funding, but criticize the department’s failure to complete a strategic plan.

Despite concerns about the county Fire Department’s lax spending practices, Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday agreed to release $1.5 million to replace an aging fire station in Camarillo.

The Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 to approve the construction money after board members emphasized their growing impatience for completion of a new management plan to reduce department overtime and sick pay and to remedy other problems criticized by a citizens task force earlier this year.

Supervisor John K. Flynn made the point most strongly, casting a “protest vote” against the new fire station in Camarillo.

“The fire district is out of control,” Flynn said in an interview after the vote. “It’s got to be brought back into control. Hopefully, the strategic plan will do that.”

Meanwhile, fire officials said they were delighted to get the money to replace the cramped, aging Station No. 54 south of the Ventura Freeway.

“We are pleased that we’ll be able to build this needed station,” said Ventura County Fire Chief James E. Sewell. “This has been our No. 1 priority for capital improvements. It’s something we’ve been planning for for a long time.”

Fire officials want to relocate the station to the north side of the freeway so firefighters would not be trapped south of it if overpasses collapsed during a catastrophic earthquake. Most of Camarillo’s 56,000 residents live north of the freeway in developments that went up long after the concrete firehouse was built in the early 1940s by the federal Works Progress Administration.

Moreover, the Fire Department has grown weary of the electrical and plumbing problems that have bedeviled the station’s crew. And the small station does not have room to store both its large fire engines inside. One rig is parked next to the old station on Ventura Boulevard, subjecting the equipment to the elements.

“The new station will provide us the room to put all of our equipment inside,” said Capt. John Moland, head of the station’s six-member crew.

Still, he said, the crew has mixed emotions about leaving the historic building and its open-beamed ceilings. “It doesn’t feel like a business place when you come to work. It feels more like home.”

The new station planned for Pickwick Drive in central Camarillo will have ample room for the two fire engines. At 8,000-square-feet, the planned station will also provide sleeping quarters and administrative offices for fire crews.

The new station will be financed with interest from delinquent property taxes that were earmarked for Fire Department construction projects. The department bought the land for the fire station in 1992 and has listed a new Camarillo station as a construction priority since 1989, Sewell said.

In May, the supervisors asked Fire Department leaders to develop A long-range management plan after an audit criticized the department’s fiscal policies and a citizens committee recommended a number of cost-saving steps. Among the suggestions were to reduce sick pay for firefighters, cut their overtime pay, use civilians for some non-emergency work and reinstitute a volunteer force.

Sewell, who recently joined the department, said he is reviewing a draft of the plan prepared by his predecessor and expects to deliver final draft to the board soon.