By JEFF EPSTEIN
[email protected]
WEATHERSFIELD, Vt. — The process of creating a municipal fire department here got down to business Thursday evening in the first of a series of special meetings designed to hash out questions and concerns about the move.
At its previous meeting, the select board took the formal step of deciding to create the municipal department. In the spring town meeting will be charged with passing the budget for the new department. This will include funding for a new fire chief, a position that Town Manager Ed Morris and some others believe should be a full-time one with benefits.
Morris and all members of the select board except for John Arrison attended Thursday’s meeting. Members from both fire associations and the fire commission were invited. Members of the West Weathersfield Volunteer Fire Association attended, but none from the Ascutney association were in the room. About eight persons were in the audience altogether.
Budget numbers were not part of this meeting. They will be addressed in the next meeting Nov. 19, which Morris said will include the budget request from the fire commission, although it has been temporarily suspended.
For this first meeting, select board chair Kelly Murphy declared, “We’re going to do a little brainstorming session.”
She began by writing on her paper poster board the following question: “As our town moves to a municipal fire department, what conversations are necessary?”
That prompted several questions from the audience and the select board. Murphy jotted them onto the board in alternating red and green ink. Among them:
Who owns what equipment?
Since the Ascutney fire station belongs to the association there, what would the new department do for a station in Ascutney if the Ascutney VFA does not wish to sell or donate its station and equipment to the town?
This question is also related to a service standard, said Morris. The town should be able to provide 4,000 gallons of water within five minutes (which he said roughly translates to fighting fires within a five-mile radius).
If Ascutney does offer to sell its equipment, will the town buy it?
If the equipment from both associations is consolidated, could the town sell unneeded pieces off for revenue that could offset new costs? (This is an approach that Morris recommends be considered.)
How do we educate the town against misinformation?
What negative impact might this move have on individual volunteers?
Other comments from the floor included questions about the new fire chief: Should he or she be expected to respond to calls? Should the chief be an EMT or paramedic? And should the chief be full-time or part-time. (Although the working assumption is that the chief will be full-time, Morris commented that he expects the cost of benefits would be pro-rated for a less than full-time position.)
In addition, Morris said that although a tax impact of various costs and savings aren’t at hand right now, he expects that by town meeting, a tax impact for the new municipal fire department could be broken out to an actual number per $100,000 of assessed value, just as is the tax impact for the total town budget.
The next meeting on Nov. 19 will begin to determine whether the benefits of a single department and chief outweigh the costs. But Murphy and Morris both promised the questions will continue to be logged, for discussion in the following meeting in December. The plan going forward is for the select board to hold a special meeting on the second Thursday of each month on this topic, and devote one hour of its first regular meeting of the month to it.
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