Fire Station No. 7 is getting a reprieve.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said Friday in a press release he will ask the Board of Mayor and Aldermen at its May 25 meeting to repeal a Sept. 21 resolution to close Station No. 7. Under the resolution, the board would close the station if the Vicksburg Fire Department failed to reduce overtime.

The original plan was to close the station in February, but fire department overtime began falling from its 2015 levels during the first quarter of fiscal 2016, and Flaggs extended Station 7’s sentencing date until June 1.

Flaggs’ decision takes the city’s oldest fire station off the block.

He said recent discussions with Fire Chief Charles Atkins indicated the chief is monitoring overtime and reducing excessive costs in the department.

“I’ve talked to Chief Atkins,” Flaggs said Friday afternoon. “He and I are on the same page going forward to the pathway to the future on fire protection and fire service (in the city). He and I agree the new employees ought to reduce the overtime in the coming year.”

He said the fire department has hired new firefighters who are being trained at the state Fire Academy.

He said a committee of Atkins, deputy fire chiefs Kenneth Daniels and Craig Danczyk and City Attorney Nancy Thomas have begun reviewing designs for a new fire station to be build at the corner of at the corner of Maxwell Drive and Berryman Road off East Clay Street. The city bought the 2.2-acre site for $400,000 in April from Waring Investments.

The city has $1.2 million allocated for a new fire station in its $9.2 million capital improvements bond issue.

City officials for several years have discussed locating a fire station in the east end of the city to have better response times to the high-rise hotels in the area and along Clay Street, Interstate 20 and Merit Health River Region Medical Center, which is the fire department’s responsibility.

“I’m told they can start as early as September on building it,” Flaggs said. “I think they’ve selected a design. It’s going to solve a lot of problems, particularly response times on I-20, at the same time I think we will be able to look at closing one or two stations in the future and improve our rating.”

Flaggs would not say which station or stations would be replaced by the new station.

“It will be in the best interest of the city to leave the fire stations alone until we build the new one,” he said. “It would be premature for me to speculate which station ought to close. We’re not going to close a station until the new one is built. There’ still too many ifs.”

“I’ve always said we should not close a station until we’ve built a new one, and I still stand by that,” Atkins said.

The chief said the design for the new station is based on Fire Station No. 5, which is a the Vicksburg Municipal Airport off U.S. 61 South. The station, which replaced a smaller, older station at the airport, opened in 2011.

“We’re going to make this station a bit smaller than 5,” he said, adding it will have a dayroom and living quarters for the firefighters.

“Hopefully, we’ll have two truck bays and have an ambulance, rescue truck and an aerial truck,” he said.

Atkins said he recently added two more entry-level firefighters and will hold a written entry-level firefighter examination June 17.

He said the department’s present manpower allows for 37 firefighters per shift who are spread among the city’s seven departments. The goal, he said is 40 per shift.

“That’s what we’d like to have when it comes time to open a new fire station,” he said. “If we can build a new station, then we can start looking at closing a station. It will take shifting manpower and equipment, but we’re willing to make the adjustment.”