Tyler's mayor says he won't stand for raising taxes for a new fire station, despite opposition from members of the firefighter's union.
The latest study by the city shows the southwest Cumberland area of Tyler, has drastically below average emergency response times-- compared to the rest of Tyler, which could affect safety and insurance rates.
City officials say they are actively working toward a solution, but the Mayor Martin Heines and the firefighters association are not seeing eye-to-eye on how to make it happen.
"I'm not going to play politics with a main decision like this," said Heines. "It's unfortunate that right before an election that several members of a firefighter union are making a political issue about public safety...they are trying to force the city council to raise taxes 1.2 million dollars a year and I'm not going to stand for it."
The Cumberland area has experienced rapid growth over the last decade that's both residential and commercial. Tyler fire marshal Paul Findley said their goal is to get a fire unit on the scene of an emergency within 5 minutes of a call, 70 % of the time. But Findley said in the Cumberland area, their data shows they reach that goal only five percent of the time.
"We can't have a station on every corner in the city, obviously, so our challenge is to use the resources that we have," Findley said. "And use good data to figure out just how do we position ourselves across this city."