Editorial by the Outlook’s Dave Schmidt—

WCSM—  Celina Mayor Hazel outlines timeline for city’s new fire station project

After last week’s city council’s approval to purchase land for a new Celina Firehouse on Grand Lake Road many unanswered questions abound.

Celina City Council ‘Back Doors’ Land Purchase

Related: Mercer Health Reported To Have Purchased Celina’s Orchard Tree Family Restaurant

Those questions should have been answered before the purchase was made…but now Celina City Council has to be out front with the community.

Celina City Council Meeting Video Discussing Fire Department Future Plans- 2-23-26

Above Daily Standard story has the details of what steps the city planned on doing late in October.

Purchasing the Grand Lake Road property

The process: emergency + not on agenda

It wasn’t originally on the agenda, and council passed it as emergency legislation after suspending the three public readings.

1) That’s legal in many cases, but it’s the kind of process choice that tends to inflame residents because it reduces runway for public input.

2) The timeline: it contradicts the “likely staying downtown” narrative

In Oct 2025, the mayor was quoted saying the feasibility study suggested the best path was renovating city hall / current fire station, because only one viable alternate site existed and the owner “was unwilling.” He threw out rough numbers:

• ~$14.5M renovation + ~$2M soft costs + ~$1.5M temporary relocation, etc. 

Then in Feb 2026, council is buying land to move the fire station—while still saying city hall renovations remain the plan. 

So the obvious questions are:

• What changed between Oct 2025 and Feb 2026?

• Was this Grand Lake Road site the “only viable spot” mentioned earlier (and did the owner’s stance change)?

• Or did the feasibility study/ISO modeling get revisited?

In less then four months the plan for the new firehouse changed from ‘likely staying in the old city hall’ into building a new firehouse on Grand Lake Road.

Appraisals: Was there an independent appraisal for 501 Grand Lake Rd and the Baronial lots? What were the values and assumptions?

• Why emergency: What was the concrete time constraint that required bypassing 3 readings and adding it off-agenda?

• Feasibility study: Does the Mull & Weithman report explicitly recommend this site? If not, what analysis does?

• Funding plan: Bond? income tax fire-capital funds? grants? What’s the estimated all-in project cost and debt service?

• Demolition grant details: Who applied/sponsored Orchard Tree demo funding? What commitments (if any) did Mercer Health make tied to receiving demolition assistance?

• ISO/response-time map: What runs fall outside the 4-minute threshold from the new site vs the current site?

Purchase agreements between the City and Mercer Health to buy the land happened two days after passage by council, when did the negotiations to buy that land start…who approached who?

There is one other issue that has concerns that we will no disclose at this time, many are aware of several issues behind the situation.

Sharing information to residents is a key…

A reminder…’the truth don’t lie’