INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Several Vero Lake Estates residents approached the county’s fire-service panel Thursday, for the third time since November, imploring the county build them a new fire station when the money is available.

And for the first time, the committee agreed to demand Emergency Service Director John King scrub his prior list of priority sites and put Vero Lake Estates in the top three in a recommendation to the County Commission.

“I feel 100 percent that we are the most needy community for readily available fire and emergency-medical service,” said Charles Martoe, a Vero Lake Estates resident and member of the Emergency Services District Advisory Committee.

Martoe won a 3-2 vote on his motion for King to include Vero Lake Estates in a revised top-three list.

Vero Lake Estates, a large unincorporated area southwest of County Roads 512 and 510, has 2,600 homes among 4,788 lots. Firefighters respond to it from the Sebastian station, 6.4 miles away, or the Fellsmere station, 7 miles away.

King said he never dismissed residents’ call for a station. He just had other locations with greater need, he said.

The county has 12 stations now, including a new one opened in Gifford. For the next new stations, King in January cited his top two priorities — the intersections of Fourth Street at 43rd Avenue, so far delayed by budget woes, and State Road 60 at 66th Avenue. In light of the recession and falling county revenues, he declined to identify a third location.

“This isn’t about, ‘You guys don’t need your fire staton. Get lost,’” said County Commissioner Gary Wheeler, the commission’s liaison to the committee.

But Martoe said King’s failure to include a Vero Lake Estates location was “remarkable” after community activist Susan Thomasson had given a presentation with so many facts in favor of one.

Martoe’s motion won support from Fernando Herrera of Fellsmere and Sal Neglia of Sebastian.

“You don’t see anyone from Fourth Street or 66th Avenue come here,” Herrera said.

But Jim Hill, also of Sebastian, and Chairman Harry Howle dissented, preferring King’s countywide priorities.

“We could take a ‘feel good’ vote and put Vero Lake Estates at the top — and five years down the road, the demographics could completely change,” Hill said.