5/7/09
The Rio Arriba County Commission has voted for the second time to postpone closing the Lybrook Volunteer Fire Department.
Commissioners had delayed the Department’s closure April 14 despite objections by County Fire Marshal Jerome Sanchez that doing so violated state law. Sanchez was not present for the second vote, which was held April 30 in Tierra Amarilla.
The County has repeatedly offered the Lybrook Fire Department an opportunity to get into compliance with state law but has not received responses to calls or letters, Sanchez said.
“We wrote to Chief Larry Ham again last month and never got a reply,” Sanchez said.
The Department, established in 1982, has been inactive since 2006, Sanchez said. The Department rents storage space from the Williams Companies, which operates a gas processing plant in Lybrook, for a nominal annual fee. The town is located in a remote corner of Rio Arriba just east of San Juan County.
State statute 59A-53-14 requires the County to close a fire department if it ceases operations or function for 90 days. The law requires the County to take back the department’s equipment and to revert its funds to the state’s fire fund.
But commissioners voted to delay the closure until May 28 to allow time for County Manager Lorenzo Valdez to alert the San Juan County Commission.
“We’ve been at this for a while,” County Commission Chairman Elias Coriz said April 14.
“Let’s take a few more weeks to do it right and let San Juan (County) know of our plans.”
But Sanchez told Commissioners that the County was already in violation of state statute.
“I’m concerned about it,” Sanchez said after the meeting. “We’re not meeting the state statute. We’ve gone over the 90-day limit quite a few times already.”
In October 2008, Sanchez froze the Department’s funds except for utility costs.
The County has been paying $420 a month to maintain water, gas, electricity and phone service to the building, County Comptroller Mary Louise Martinez said.
“This is the first I’ve heard of the closure,” new Lybrook resident and missionary Daniel Spitler said April 17. “We just moved here to work with the Christ for All Nations nondenominational mission, near the fire station. A couple of our guys were going to volunteer (for the Fire Department) but there wasn’t anything going on there so they stopped.”
Ham said last fall that he and about 10 firefighters would attempt to restart the department. He did not return calls for this story and did not attend the Commission’s meetings.
Lindrith Fire Chief Scott Gasser has said the County asked the fire departments in Lindrith and Coyote to cover the Lybrook fire district if the department closes.
This story required a correction: It orginally stated that state statute 59A-53-14 requires the County to revert closed fire departments’ funds to the County fire fund. The statute states that funds must be reverted to the state fire fund.