City Hall takes a look at fire response times

The City of Calgary is looking at allowing for longer fire response times to new communities.

Right now, the goal is to be at a fire within seven minutes of being called 90 per cent of the time.

But a proposal going before a city committee Monday, calls for that to be changed to 10 minutes in brand new communities where the tax base isn’t large enough to support its own fire hall.

Administration says it would allow new communities to be built at a faster pace, as current regulations say a fire hall must be built before most of the homes to attain the seven minute benchmark.