Community Meeting - Potentially Losing Firehall/Community Center

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82916332171...

Meeting ID: 829 1633 2171 Passcode: e5pkUY

The Lake Samish Fire Hall and Community Building suffered significant damage recently due to a water pipe valve leak. The South Whatcom Fire Authority is in the process of assessing and working to repair the damage. However, the SWFA (South Whatcom Fire Authority) has been discussing designating 3 fire halls as surplus, and selling those fire halls on the open market to help provide funds to upgrade the more active fire halls. As the Lake Samish Fire Hall is only being used as storage for SWFA, the Lake Samish Fire/Community Hall has been identified as one of the buildings to designate as surplus, and sell on the open market. Our Lake Samish Community may lose our Community Hall that was donated and built by the Lake Samish community members. There is a long history of Community members building the first Community Hall in the early 1900’s. When the original Community Hall was purchased by the State to build the freeway, two community families generously donated the West Lake Samish properties to build a new Community and Fire Hall in the early 60’s. Money from the State was used, community members donated time and money, then much of the old community hall was taken apart, trucked to the new site and used to build the Community Hall/Fire Hall we still use and enjoy today. In 2009 the community voted to be included in the South Whatcom Fire Authority. Then the Volunteer Fire Dept. #9 quit claimed the property to SWFA. Once SWFA built the new fire hall by the Freeway, our Community/Fire Hall was then used for their storage and our meetings and activities. The Lake Samish Association has created a Community Hall Committee and we are asking all of our neighbors to come and meet with us. We’ll bring you all up to date on the changes affecting you, and we want to hear from you on what our community would like to do moving forward. There is much to discuss. Whether you are an active member of the LSA or not, we are asking all community members to meet. We want to hear from you.