Prince William County presents multi‑year plan to rebuild stations, unify apparatus purchases and replace turnout gear

Prince William County fire officials detailed a multi‑year strategy to align station construction, apparatus purchases and personal protective equipment replacement with operations during a budget work session.

Chief Labelle told the Board that the department is treating the system as a single, interdependent network and that planning and funding should reflect that reality. “This is an integrated system. It is not single stations working on their own,” he said.

The proposal would continue the county's station repair and replacement program and fund new stations in the 2026–2031 CIP cycle while shifting apparatus purchases and some station operating support toward a more centralized, systemwide model. Labelle said the county already approved a $4,000,000‑per‑year major repair and renovation program and that the initial list of renovation projects comes to about $1,300,000, with the program likely to spend the full $4,000,000 in a year.

Most of the immediate CIP work and repair money has gone to volunteer stations, but the presentation said the county will also fund county (career) stations as needed. Labelle outlined four stations shown in the FY26–31 plan: Station 30 (Wellington Road), the Dumfries Triangle station (land costs reflected because relocation is possible), Station 29 in the Summit School area, and a rebuild of the OWL station. Labelle said Station 30 and Station 29 are expected to be very busy in their first years (he estimated roughly 2,500 calls for Station 30 and about 3,000 for Station 29 in their first year).

On equipment, Labelle proposed centralizing apparatus procurement rather than leaving volunteer companies to save and buy vehicles on their own. He told the Board that purchase lead times and costs have risen sharply: ambulances up about 20 percent, engines about 38 percent, rescues about 7 percent and aerials about 44 percent. For FY26 the presented replacement list included four ambulances (three for county stations), five engines (including Dumfries, Yorkshire and Dale City), and two aerial devices.

Labelle also proposed a multi‑year replacement of turnout gear. He said the department found many sets older than recommended: "we have 24 employees who both their first and second set of gear ... [that are] older than 10 years" and additional staff with one set older than 10 years. To avoid repeating past cycles where a one‑time grant bought many sets without a rotation plan, Labelle asked for an initial $5,000,000 purchase and $1,000,000 per year thereafter to sustain a 10‑year rotation and to move toward PFAS‑free gear where feasible.

Labelle described the funding context: the fire levy currently supports multiple items including career staffing, station operating budgets, apparatus and the renovation program. He noted the county has approximately $14,000,000 in combined fire levy fund balances but said those dollars are unevenly distributed between volunteer and county stations and may not be in the right places to cover all apparatus needs. Labelle said a more unified funding approach would reduce the pressure on individual volunteer companies to raise funds for apparatus and would improve system reliability.

Supervisors asked a range of operational and fiscal questions. Supervisor Vega asked whether the landfill ID pilot mentioned earlier had been tested (a different part of the meeting) and whether new systems would have trial periods; Labelle and other staff generally recommended pilots and follow‑up memos where appropriate. Supervisors also pressed on whether volunteer companies would retain funds for quick repairs and how centralized purchases would interact with local project needs; Labelle said the CARP/renovation program would not pull every local-dollar balance and that volunteer budgets would still be available for station maintenance and smaller projects.

Labelle and supervisors discussed response‑time goals and operational reliability. Labelle said the system needs to ensure not just a first unit arrival metric but sufficient units present for particular calls; the proposed FY26 budget frames response targets by percentile (for example, 85 percent of the time meet a benchmark) rather than a single fixed target.

The Board did not take formal action at the session; the proposals were offered as part of the FY26 CIP and budget discussions and will return for further review and potential appropriation decisions.

Ending: The department will continue to refine cost estimates and deployment plans with Facilities and Finance staff; supervisors signaled interest in tying land purchases and road improvements into station siting decisions and asked staff for additional data on prior insurance and physicals costs, apparatus lifecycle analysis, and recruit/volunteer pipelines.