By KEVIN NEVERS

The Pine Township Volunteer Fire Department get called to a lot of structure fires in its bailiwick, but when it has in the past it nearly always made a call from the scene for mutual aid from the Chesterton Fire Department.

Now, under an agreement approved by the Chesterton Town Council at its meeting Monday night, the CFD will automatically respond to five classes of calls whenever the Porter County 911 Dispatch Center tones out the PTVFD: chimney fires, residential fires, garage/storage building fires, cave-ins, and building collapses.

The council voted 5-0 to approve that agreement, a slightly revised version of an agreement signed last year by former Pine Township Trustee/Assessor Bill Theis. Chesterton Fire Chief Warren “Skip” Highwood told the Chesterton Tribune this morning that, though Theis had entered into that agreement, he apparently never actually made formal arrangements with the Dispatch Center to activate it.

As it happens, the area which the CFD will assist the PTVFD in covering is slightly larger under the new agreement than it was under the old one: formerly the CFD would have automatically responded to any of those five classes of calls as far east as C.R. 475E; now it will respond as far east as C.R. 600E.

Most of the area covered by the agreement is farmland, Highwood said, with little in the way of structures.

Highwood said that under the agreement the CFD might be automatically dispatched to Pine Township only three or four times a year and that, in all likelihood, the CFD would have responded anyway.

He added the agreement will probably earn for Pine Township a better fire-service rating from the Insurance Service Office and lower fire-insurance premiums for property owners.

Abercrombie Woods

In other business, the council voted 5-0 to approve on its final reading an ordinance which re-zones from single-family R-1 to double-family R-2 a 75-acre parcel recently annexed by the town and located between C.R. 1050N and C.R. 1000N and west of C.R. 200W. On that parcel Dale and Mary Hiteman have proposed building a maximum of 144 townhomes of two units each in a project lately dubbed Abercrombie Woods, but to do so they needed the re-zone. At its May meeting the Plan Commission unanimously endorsed the re-zone after the Hitemans agreed to a number of written commitments.

•The siding materials for the front facade of each unit must consist of brick or stone.

•All uses allowable under the R-2 zone will be permitted in Abercrombie Woods with the exception of a bed and breakfast inn.

•A landscaped buffer, providing for 70 percent summer opacity and 50 percent winter opacity and a minimum height of six feet above grade within five years of installation, must be planted on a 10-foot wide strip on the western boundary of the property.

•A minimum of 5.05 acres of usable land must be reserved for open space and maintained at the expense of the Hitemans for at least two years after the approval of the secondary plat, at which time the property owners association must assume the cost of maintenance.

•The Hitemans must construct an eight-foot sidewalk along the length of their property on the south side of C.R. 1050N or—should the council otherwise direct them—they must make a contribution to the Parks and Recreation Department of $32,000. That payment would be used to pay any part of the cost of building a sidewalk across the street along the north side of C.R. 1050—where Don Coker is developing Westwood Manor—or it would be used to purchase property or an easement for the construction of a pedestrian pathway linking the Prairie Duneland Trail to the northern boundary of Westwood Manor.

One other item related to Abercrombie Woods was on Monday’s agenda: the petition of the Hitemans for the annexation of a 0.82-acre parcel immediately west of the main 75-acre parcel. The smaller parcel was not originally annexed with the larger one, Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann, because of a statutory contiguity problem. By annexing that parcel, he added—which would be used for stormwater drainage—the council would ensure the ability of the town to control drainage at Abercrombie Woods.

The council took no action Monday on the annexation ordinance itself, but did vote 5-0 to adopt a fiscal plan whose finding is that the annexation of the tiny parcel would result in no additional cost to the town in the provision of municipal services.

At a public hearing which preceded the vote on the fiscal plan, no one spoke in favor of the annexation and no one in opposition.

Posted 6/10/2003