Nasewaupee on Track to Create New Fire Department

The Town of Nasewaupee’s plan to split from the Southern Door Fire Department (SDFD) continues to move forward, despite recent efforts from the department’s three other municipalities to persuade the town to stay, said Nasewaupee chair Steve Sullivan.

“They did make one offer to us that if we were to stay, they would give us one extra board member and change the bylaws that the majority of towns would have to approve the budget,” he said.

Nasewaupee is now paying more than two-thirds of the amount levied for the SDFD, based on equalized value. The town wanted to have a majority of the members on the fire board and not pay more than 51% of the cost to remain in the department.

“That wasn’t really negotiable,” Sullivan said.

The eight-member SDFD board is composed of two representatives each from the Village of Forestville and the Towns of Forestville, Nasewaupee and Clay Banks.

Nasewaupee gave the other three municipalities a one-year notice at the fire board’s annual meeting last September that it planned to split from the SDFD and form its own department. Sullivan said an ordinance to approve Nasewaupee’s own department will be acted on at the board’s March 16 meeting.

“Later, once this is formed, the fire department will set their standard operating procedures,” he said. “But they’ve already written them up in a document for the attorney.”

Bill Krueger, a member of an ad hoc committee started last October to form a new department, said the department that will begin Oct. 1 will be known as Nasewaupee Fire Rescue.

“Nasewaupee Fire Rescue will have one station to support, not two, as the Southern Door Fire Department, which we are a part of, does now,” he said. “We’ll have five fire trucks to maintain and keep up, not 11, as we have to do now.”

Krueger said he expects the new department will have 17-25 firefighters, and possibly more, compared to around 40 now with the SDFD.

“What we’re obviously trying to do is keep the $290,000-plus tax levy in-house because we feel we can run it for much less than that,” he said.

Excluding purchases on items such as trucks, Sullivan said the town expects to operate its own department for about $200,000 a year.

Of the overall SDFD tax levy of around $409,000 to fund the current year, the department’s budget shows Nasewaupee’s share is approximately $293,000.