A county staff member told the Washington County Safety Committee the county has a long‑dormant fire training center capital project and asked permission to close the project while preserving residual funds for potential future work.

"When I made a promise to the department because they've had a hesitation, close the project because they still want to do some capital improvements out there, but it's been years and years and years of of it just lying dormant. So what my promise to the department was, if you, allow me to ask for a closure of the project, the money that's in there, I could tell the board that should a phase 2 arise, we could just set up a a a new, you know, fire train center phase 2 project," the staff member said.

The staff member described options for keeping funds available: move residual money into the 2025 fire budget line, add it to contingencies for later use, or let it flow to the general fund so it would be available on fund balance. "...we could take the residual money from the capital project and actually put it in the fire line of the 2025 budget, or we can add its contingencies so that you could pull it out later," the staff member said.

Warren Kelly (role unspecified) noted that routine operational costs have been paid from the general fund and suggested only modest capital spending would likely be needed. Committee members discussed the amount remaining and whether $70,000 would be significant.

The committee voted to move the proposal to the finance committee for formal action; a second was recorded by Miss Wong and the committee approved the referral.