LESLIE WILLIAMS / Staff

Marco Island Fire Rescue Division Chief Jeff Kutzke points out a standpipe in the training tower located at the old fire station on East Elkcam Circle. The training tower allows the fire department to simulate emergencies in a taller structure, including using the roof for rappelling. Work performed on the tower included repair of the standpipe, new doors and windows and a new coat of exterior paint. The ladder to the right of Kutzke goes to the roof of the building, which was built in the 1980s and is still used two to three times a week by both Marco and Isles of Capri firefighters.

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Try wearing a firefighter’s suit in this climate. You’d want a place to stop off in the middle of the day to get cleaned up, too.

That is part of the reason the Marco Island Fire Department has spruced up the old fire station, located at 751 E. Elkcam Circle. That, and a handful of complaints about the appearance of the site.

The Elkcam Circle fire station is a tiny facility, hardly imaginable as the source of the island’s fire protection in decades past. In recent years, it had turned into a storage area — the closet located in a far corner of the house where no one ever goes.

Old lost and found items, boat trailers and building records were stored in the department’s bay, kitchen and even the yard. City Code Enforcement was getting complaints about the look of the building.

“We did have complaints in the past about that property,” said Chief Code Compliance Officer Eric Wardle. “We used to get complaints about the weeds, and when we would get complaints, I would call the fire station and say, ‘Hey, could you get somebody over there?’ ”

Wardle said the complaints came in on multiple occasions, but the fire department was always diligent about remedying the problem.

Aside from cutting the grass and clearing out the junk, the Marco Island Fire Rescue Department has taken on a number of other tasks to get the area usable. A new coat of paint, both inside and out, has been added to the buildings. Problems with the duct work were fixed in the fire house, plus the bathroom and the kitchen area were cleaned up. New tile and carpet were laid in the kitchen and break area. The old bunk room has been overhauled as a storage room.

Before, those areas were not usable by the fire department personnel. It meant that firefighters performing training on the site had to go all of the way back to the main fire station on San Marco Road to use the restroom. Now, they can use the training tower at the back of the site without interruption in their day.

The training tower, a three-story, box-like structure, allows firefighters to simulate drills in a burning building. The stairwell is fitted with standpipes similar to those found in condo buildings. The training tower, like everything else on the site, got a bit of an overhaul with fresh paint, new doors and windows and repair to the standpipe.

Fire Division Chief Jeff Kutzke said the department uses the tower two or three times a week, and also makes it available for use by the Isles of Capri Fire Department for training scenarios.

In all, the improvements totaled about $12,800, with nearly half of the expenses consumed by painting costs. The money came out of $20,000 in funds approved by City Council as part of the Fiscal Year 2007 budget, specifically for capital improvements to the training facility.

Fire Chief Mike Murphy credited his staff for putting in the time and energy to make it presentable and usable.

“The city has a major investment in this property and its’ minor investment at this time protects that,” he wrote in a report to interim City Manager Tony Shoemaker.

Kutzke said the refurbished site allows the department to reduce response times to the northern end of the island, as well as make it easier for the Isles of Capri Fire Rescue Department to perform zone coverage on the island. That is necessary when Marco firefighters are responding to two calls on the island, and another unit has to be at the ready to attend to additional emergency calls.

With a hub closer to the Capri district, those firefighters can stay at a safer proximity to their station, Kutzke said. The Capri department has probably performed zone coverage on Marco about 300 times this year alone, Kutzke estimated.

The complaints about the site have ceased, said Wardle. In fact, he has fielded a different type of call altogether about the site.

“Someone called and said it looked great,” he said. “They said, ‘Thanks for cleaning it up.’ Generally we don’t get those calls.”

Despite rumors to the contrary, Murphy stated in his report, the facility would not be used 24-hours a day.

However, not everyone is thrilled about the changes to the training station.

City Councilor Ted Forcht said he is irked that the improvements did not come before City Council for approval first. Council did sanction the Fiscal Year 2007 expenditure in 2006, as well as an additional $25,000 for improvements to both stations approved in 2007, according to the report Murphy submitted to Shoemaker.

“That was long before we had the Save Our Homes amendment,” Forcht said. “I just think it’s bad judgment to be spending that money.”

With ever-tightening budget constraints in the state of Florida, Forcht said, he would have liked to see more careful consideration of how that money should be spent. With the city considering eliminating quality of life services during the Fiscal Year 2008 budget workshop, every penny counts — and should be carefully counted, Forcht said.

“To spend to the end of everybody’s budget, it seems just slightly irresponsible to me,” Forcht said. “I want to have a real budget that really serves the needs of the people and that we can live with.”