Bannock County voters shot down all three ballot issues up for a vote in Tuesday’s election.

A $1.1 million bond to build a new fire station to improve emergency response times in McCammon fell just four votes short of receiving the necessary supermajority to pass.

The new fire station bond received 242 votes in favor and 130 against.

Those results amounted to 65 percent support for the bond.

McCammon was seeking to replace its current undersized fire station after several community residents told McCammon City Council President Aaron Hunsaker about having to wait over half an hour for help to arrive during emergencies.

Hunsaker said the community has no locally stationed ambulance. Paramedics usually respond to McCammon emergencies from Lava Hot Springs or Pocatello.

Hunsaker said the new fire station would house ambulances as well as fire trucks and would significantly shorten the response times for McCammon firefighters and paramedics and would make the community a much safer place to live.

The new fire station would have been located on city-owned land near McCammon’s north entrance. The city planned to sell the existing fire station if the bond measure had passed.

Passage of the bond would have raised property taxes for the owner of a McCammon home valued at $100,000 to $150,000 by $3 to $5 per month, counting the homeowners exemption and provided that the city would have received the necessary grant funding, according to Hunsaker.

Some of the $1.1 million in funding provided if the bond measure had passed would have been used to turn the city offices into a senior/community center.

Another proposal by the Portneuf Library District i Chubbuck to build a $12 million new library building failed.

The plan to build the new library received 4,861 votes in favor, or 47 percent of ballots cast, to 5,494 votes against, or 53 percent of ballots cast.

The bond required a super-majority of at least 66 percent voter support to pass.

The new library was proposed to replace the existing 11,920-square-foot Portneuf District Library building at 5210 Stuart Ave.

A similar bond vote to build a new Portneuf District Library building failed in 2019.

Bannock County voters also rejected on Tuesday the plan to study a proposed Pocatello-Chubbuck merger.

In response to an advisory question asking Bannock County voters if they “support exploring the consolidation of Pocatello and Chubbuck into one city,” 20,464 voters, or 53 percent of all ballots cast, voted against the study while 17,852 voters, or 47 percent of all ballots cast, supported it.

Both sides in the debate over the proposed consolidation of the two cities said they’re looking forward to reviewing how Pocatello and Chubbuck residents voted on the study. The final advisory vote results did not break out how either of the cities voted, but Bannock County election officials said they would be providing that information later this week.

The Bannock County Commission decided this past summer to put the advisory question on the November election ballot following a presentation from the group interested in studying a Pocatello-Chubbuck merger, the One City Exploratory Committee.

Dustin Manwaring, a Pocatello Republican and Idaho House of Representatives candidate who won in his election Tuesday, and Ryan Satterfield, a real estate developer from Pocatello, are the current co-chairs of the committee.

Manwaring said the results of the advisory vote are encouraging.

But he declined to comment further until the individual precinct level data for Pocatello and Chubbuck is available and he’s had a chance to review that information with the One City Exploratory Committee.

Chubbuck Mayor Kevin England, an ardent opponent of the proposed consolidation of the two cities, also wants to see the individual precinct data that will show specifically how residents in Pocatello and Chubbuck voted on the planned study.

“The individual precinct level data is going to be imperative,” England said. “Once we see the data for the precincts of Pocatello and Chubbuck, that will be the real tell.”