Graham County Electric Cooperative Playing a Major Role in Pima Fire Station Renovation and Rebuild

“Concern for community” more than a catch phrase to electric cooperative and employees

For Graham County Electric Cooperative, getting involved in a project to help the small town of Pima build a new fire station is what the rural utility “is supposed to do.”

“Everything we do is geared toward supporting the community in some way, so this is a natural extension to one of our mission statements, which is “concern for the community,” said Phil Cook, GCEC CEO.

As it turns out, the Pima Fire Department needs just the kind of help the electric co-op is able to provide, utilizing its contacts to get the fund-raising part of the project started, a process that’s in its third year and still ongoing.

It started when the co-op’s board president, Reuben McBride, heard that the existing fire station was in need of extensive renovation or replacement, and barely capable of housing the large firetrucks and other equipment the town owns.

McBride was able to use his contacts to reach out to Congressman Juan Ciscomani and get his support for what’s known as a congressionally directed spending (CDS) allocation of $2 million for the project.

It took months, but the money was eventually approved in the federal budget and allocated to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for eventual use to rebuild or renovate the fire station.

Kyle Koch, Congressman Ciscomani’s district director, was on a recent tour of the fire station as stakeholders met to go over what remains to be completed, with the priority being the need to raise more than $600,000 required as a 25 percent match for the CDS allocation.

Koch said Ciscomani – just like the electric co-op – is committed to meeting the needs of rural communities and their residents.

“I need to start by talking about community; You get to meet the people who live here, you fall in in love with the community – then you see how the projects that we support are so important to the community,” Koch said.

“Congressman Ciscomani realizes rural communities have unique needs and they often get overlooked because of the attention paid to larger areas of the state, the large metro and suburban areas; he’s paying attention to rural areas, and their needs,” Koch said.

A new stakeholder has stepped forward to help the small, rural fire department get the facility it so desperately needs – Lloyd Construction of Tucson, a family-owned construction company that’s been serving southern Arizona for more than 50 years.

Brad Lloyd, co-owner of the firm, said it has always been guided by “concern for community,” and he and the company’s general manager were happy to take a day to make the nearly 300-mile round trip to see what they can do to help.

“The fire departments, police departments, the people that serve, these are the things that hold the community together, so when I come across a fire station that is in such dire need of help, we want to do everything we can,” Lloyd said.

“We’ve had several projects where they didn’t quite have the budget at the very beginning, where we’ve had to think outside the box and do different things, from being involved in fundraising to getting in-kind donations from different corporations and subcontractors,” Lloyd said.

Daryl Weech, Pima Fire Department’s chairman for the committee working on the project, said bringing so many resources and people together for the day “makes all the difference.

“I feel like we are making progress; we haven’t been able to do much on our own and have been a little bit discouraged in the past.

“But now we are getting some ideas on how to get the funding and move forward, and actually I think it’s doable it’s doable and I’ve always felt like it’s doable,” Weech said.