From the Western Springs Patch: Just over a year after ceremonial shovels broke ground, the Western Springs (Ill.) Fire Department officially opened its new fire station.

During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Fire Chief Tony Bednarz emphasized the amount of hard work that had gone into keeping the fire station funded entirely from exterior sources, a task that included a rush application for stimulus funding that likely only succeeded because the station was one of President Obama’s oft-touted “shovel-ready” projects.

PHOTO GALLERY: A Look Inside the Western Springs South Fire Station

“The bottom line is, you are looking at the product that’s now operational, and there are basically no local tax monies [used] to build this, and I think that’s one heck of an accomplishment for this village,” he said. “We have this facility, and it’s basically totally funded by grant money.”

He added that the station had been built “ahead of schedule and on budget.”

“One of the key goals that this station was built for was, number one, to serve the entire Village of Western Springs, not just the south end,” Bednarz said. “We also wanted it to be designed to last a minimum of 50 years. … It had to be designed [so that] as the Village grows, this thing will grow with it. And it will.”