Northern Door Discusses Fire District

Fighting fires in even the smallest towns is increasingly complicated, and the volunteer fire departments that Northern Door relies on are bearing a burden that grows heavier with each regulation and mandate handed down by the state and federal governments.

Concerns about how to handle the demands led Liberty Grove Town Chairman John Lowry to call a meeting of Northern Door municipalities to discuss forming a fire district Feb. 25.

“We want to see if a cooperative effort would provide some cost savings,” Lowry said. “But it’s equally important to see if the personnel are getting the best training and equipment. Is there a benefit to consolidating?”

Lowry said he’s also concerned that eventually one of the departments may have to look at hiring a full-time firefighter because the number of volunteers is dwindling.

A single full-time firefighter, at about $80-100,000 in salary and benefits, would cost more than the entire labor budget for the Sister Bay/ Liberty Grove Fire Department.

Officials from every municipality north of Sevastopol attended the meeting, but Lowry was criticized by some for not specifically inviting the fire chiefs.

“My opinion is that this should come from the fire chiefs or the departments, not be handed down by the municipalities,” said Sister Bay Village President Denise Bhirdo.

Lowry said the meeting was just a starting point.

“The buck starts and stops with the elected officials,” he said. “The technical aspects we don’t know, but the budget falls in our lap.”

Fire chiefs said many benefits could come from forming a district, but cost savings isn’t one of them. Gibraltar Fire Chief Jon Stahl said he doesn’t see many areas where departments duplicate equipment unnecessarily.

“Not every town has the same equipment or aerial ladders,” Stahl said. “You need to have certain equipment dispersed geographically to get beneficial insurance ratings and meet requirements. If you started over you would need just as many stations dispersed pretty much as they are now.”

Sister Bay/ Liberty Grove Fire Chief Chris Hecht said the departments have come a long way in the last 20 years in their ability to work together and consolidate efforts.

“I’ll be the first to admit that relationships were not good 30 to 40 years ago, but we’ve worked hard to build bridges,” he said. “We have automatic mutual aid agreements and share equipment and resources. When there was a fire in Egg Harbor in January, four fire chiefs worked under the command of Egg Harbor Chief Steve Schopf seamlessly.”

“Everybody realizes now that we have to work together,” he said. He said the mid-Door agreement, made up of Ephraim, Baileys Harbor and Gibraltar departments, works together to bring in high quality training and courses for their firefighters. A larger district could help the departments do a little better job of specialty training and sharing the cost of specialized equipment.

But it would not solve the chiefs’ major concern.

“Our biggest problem is staffing and getting enough people to field a team,” he said. “We ask so much out of so few people to meet the state and federal regulations. If we can get more help out of this conversation it would be great.”

Hecht said the average age of a Sister Bay volunteer firefighter is 35 to 40 years old and bodies are getting tougher to come by.

“We would never need to hire a full-time firefighter because of the number of calls, but we may need to at some point because of a lack of volunteers,” he said.

Town and village officials worry about creating another layer of government and moving too fast, but Lowry said he wants to continue looking into the idea.

“If we can get past the emotions and see if there is an advantage that warrants even looking at this, we might cut costs and improve safety,” he said. “There may be no advantage, but we’d like to see.”

Another meeting has been scheduled for Monday, March 29 at 7 pm at the Liberty Grove Town Hall. All officials and fire chiefs have been invited to join the discussion.