VIENNA — Ohio members of Congress — including U.S. Reps. Dave Joyce and Michael Rulli — sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging him to designate $25 million for the construction of a new fire station at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.

The letter states: “Given the clear recognition of the importance of this project at the Pentagon and in Congress, it is our hope that $25 million will be designated for construction of the YARS fire station through the funds provided by the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act 2025 signed into law by President (Donald) Trump on March 15, 2025.”

Signing the letter were Joyce, R-Bainbridge, whose district includes Trumbull County; Rulli, R-Salem, whose district includes Mahoning and Columbiana counties; U.S. Rep. Michael Turner, R-Dayton; and the state’s two U.S. senators, Bernie Moreno, R-Westlake, and Jon Husted, R-Upper Arlington.

The letter adds: “We stand ready to assist in this effort in any way that we can and look forward to partnering on additional initiatives that will benefit our warfighters in northeast Ohio and across the country.”

The $25 million for a new fire station was included in the Air Force Reserve budget request for military construction projects. The project was authorized in the National Defense Authorization Act that was approved last year as well as in the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies appropriation bill last year.

“It is now ready to move forward with construction so that our airmen and reservists in northeast Ohio are adequately equipped to meet their critical mission responsibilities,” the letter states.

The Vienna air base received a $2.5 million federal earmark last year for planning and design work for the new fire station.

The YARS fire department is one of the largest in Trumbull County and has 42 mutual aid agreements, mostly in Trumbull. The department also provides crash response to the attached Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.

The fire station was built in 1982.

YARS has about 2,000 employees, most of them reservists and active duty, and an annual economic impact of about $150 million.

The base is home to the U.S. Department of Defense’s only large-area fixed-wing aerial spray unit. It controls disease-carrying insects, pest insects and undesirable vegetation as well as dispersing oil spills in large bodies of water.

YARS is going through a significant upgrade in its aircraft, switching from C-130H models to new C-130J-30 Super Hercules aircraft. Two of the eight new aircraft have arrived with the remaining six coming in stages until mid-2026.

The planes are replacing C-130H models at YARS that were built between 1989 and 1992 and were assigned to the air base in 1994 when the 910th received its airlift wing designation.

The new planes cost about $109.75 million each for a total investment of $878 million.

In addition to the new planes, an $11 million main gate relocation project broke ground in April 2024 and is expected be finished by this August and $8 million was secured to resurface the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport’s 9,000-foot taxiway that leads to the facility’s main runway and connects to YARS.