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Though it would cost an extra $6,000, the Crescent City Police Department will receive a generator capable of heating the entire station.

After discovering that the station’s current generator only powers about half the building, City Councilors on Monday unanimously approved purchasing a 24 kilowatt replacement using roughly $11,175 in Community Power Resiliency Allocation grant dollars.

According to City Manager Eric Wier, however, the generator will cost about $12,000, plus an extra $4,100 for the installation. The Council approved kicking in an extra $6,000 to ensure the police station would be completely covered during a power outage.

“I think we need to make the capital improvement that meets the need,” Crescent City Mayor Pro Tem Blake Inscore said. “Not meets most of the need. The bottomline is we were going to get a generator that meets most of the needs for free. Now we can get a generator that meets all of our needs. We’re only allocating $6,000 for the capital improvement and we’re getting $17,000 worth of value.”

The new generator would come from Blue Star Gas and Northridge Electric would install it, Wier said.

Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin pursued Community Power Resiliency grant dollars filtered through the Del Norte County Office of Emergency Services after he discovered the current generator doesn’t work the way it should.

“The current way it’s hooked up, it does not power the whole building,” he said. “My office doesn’t work — I would have to operate out of somewhere else. The report rooms work and I think one of the back rooms work, but we’re dark in the bathrooms…”

While a 22 kilowatt generator would power the building, Griffin said there’s a possibility it wouldn’t be able to run the building’s heat pump efficiently. He did suggest space heaters as an alternative, noting any new generator would be better than the existing one.

The new generator would be powered through an existing propane line, Griffin said. It would have a continuous supply of propane, eliminating the need to be refilled.

“If something major happened, we wouldn’t be worrying about supply line,” he said. “Unless a major earthquake happened, in which case the building’s not here and we wouldn’t be using it anyway.”

According to Griffin, a backup generator exists at the police department’s emergency operations center in the city’s public works yard.

Once it’s installed, the new generator will be partially covered, Griffin said, though there are plans to install a covered parking area at the police station.

Wier said the generator would have an exterior shell that can weather the elements and would be rust proof.

In other matters, the Council authorized Crescent City Fire Chief Bill Gillespie to submit an application for a $39,966 grant from the 2021 Rural Fire Capacity Grant Program. Those dollars would be used for wildland fire shelters, gear to carry the shelters, radio chest harnasses and wildland helmet headlamps and hose rollers.

According to Wier, the grant requires a matching contribution of about $20,000 for a total equipment purchase of $40,000. The match would be split between Crescent City and hte Crescent Fire Protection District, he said.

“In our budget, how we typically have done it, we budget $20,000 — half of which comes from the city and the other half comes from the (fire) district,” Wier said. “If we’re unsuccessful in obtaining the grant, those funds go towards uniform needs. If successful it doubles our buying power and for $20,000, we get $40,000 worth of equipment.”

Wier noted that a property tax assessment to benefit the Crescent Fire Protection District is currently before voters within the district.

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