April 7, 2026
Open Letter to Celina City Council and Administration-
To: Mayor Jeff Hazel, City Council President Jason King, Safety-Service Director Tom Hitchcock and Council Members.
This is an open letter to all of you to ask for answers to questions that concern many Celina residents.about the new proposed Celina Fire Department Firehouse.
- 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?
- What will be the cost to the city to build the new building
- Will the citizens of Celina incur additional taxes
- Projected timeline to break ground and completion of firehouse?
- What will happen to the Main Street Courthouse?
Please forward other details that you have on this building project.
We hope you will reply to this request as soon as possible. We know that you are all currently deeply involved in bee hive regulations…but we hope that you can work this in to your schedule.
Thank you
Dave Schmidt
Mercer County Outlook
Mercer County Outlook 
Disclaimer: I am not Dave Schmidt or related to him in any way.
Sounds like legitimate questions that the City Fathers should be able to answer. In the spirit of the Government should be willing to be held accountable, it will be interesting to see the response.
I know I run the risk of being accussed of TDS and hating Celina but good for you Mr. Schmidt.
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LOL !!!!
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like I said before who cares it’s overdue anyways don’t see anyone crying about it but this site and 2 Dave’s LOL just like the schools and everything else in the community. To me I think the fire department and their buildings and equipment and all is pretty darn important. What if you’re houses were on fire wouldn’t you want them there pronto with good response time and sufficient equipments ?
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“What if you’re houses were on fire wouldn’t you want them there pronto with good response time and sufficient equipments ?” My uneducated guess would be 100% of folks answering that question (unless they are arsonist) would want a rapid response.
Please explain to me how your question invalidates Mr Schmidt’s questions. Be kind as I apparently suffer from delusions.
As for the”crying”part, I actually have no stance on this issue. I just like to see all government held accountable. Quite frankly, if this is a good plan for the community/tax payers, the promoters of this plan should be able to easily answer Mr. Schmidt’s questions.
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