BELLOWS FALLS — The $1.93 million village budget, as presented, maintains the current staffing for the Bellows Falls Fire Department, which includes five full-time career positions, and approximately 18 paid, on-call career firefighters.
Should the voters at the business portion of the Annual Village Meeting on Monday, May 18, decide to go with a figure from a preliminary $1.6 million budget - which eliminates all but one of the full-time, and all the part-time career firefighters, as well as $321,775 worth of wages and benefits for four full-time career firefighters and all the paid part-time on-call career staff positions, retaining only the chief full time - village residents will see an approximate savings of $90 on $100,000 of the grand list assessed property values. [See related story this issue.]
Trustee Sandy Martin explained, “It's the most logical point of budget adjustment for the villagers, and for us to [look at to] cut, to continue to provide an adequate level of services.”
The suggested move toward an all-volunteer fire department was a “trend,” Martin told The Commons. He came to that conclusion after having looked at 14 towns of size and population comparable to Bellows Falls that maintain all-volunteer fire departments.
But those are not fire departments that began as career-staffed and then switched to an all-volunteer department, and career firefighters in the region have expressed skepticism.
Retired Brandon Fire Chief Robert Kilpeck, who represents the Vermont State Firefighters' Association on the board of directors of the National Volunteer Fire Council, said that he knows of only two town fire departments that have considered a change from full-time to all-volunteer, and both decided not to go that route.
Kilpeck said many municipalities are facing issues similar to those of Bellows Falls and have found other solutions by hiring administrators (“for the copious amounts of paperwork these days”), forming fire districts among several towns, and by answering emergency medical service calls out of the stations with their own ambulances and personnel.
“Why go backwards?” Deputy Chief Joseph Sangermano of Southwestern New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid System said when asked about the wisdom of making such a change.
By comparison, the Bellows Falls Police Department payroll is budgeted for $578,995, while the fire-department payroll without reductions stands at $302,585. Police department benefits are costing the village $211,025, compared to $127,340 for the fire department.
Golden Cross Ambulance is paid $72,000 annually. Dispatching services through the Southwestern New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid (SNHDFMA) system in Keene costs $33,600 annually. And the village pays $38,920 each year for a full-time police clerk/dispatcher.
ISO ratings, insurance connections
Both Kilpeck and BFFD Deputy Chief John Cenate say voters should consider other factors as well.
Insurance Services Office (ISO) ratings measure and evaluate the major elements of a community's fire suppression system. The fire rating of a town or village - which determines business and homeowner insurance premiums - provides a public protection classification (PPC) on a scale of 1 (exemplary fire protection) to 10 (the community's fire suppression program does not meet ISO's minimum criteria).
Cenate speculated that going to an all-volunteer fire-fighting force could very likely put the village's current Class 4 ISO rating as low as Class 9.
Broken into percentages, 10 percent of the rating reflects the community's emergency communications capabilities, including 911 telephone systems, adequacy of telephone lines, operator supervision and staffing, and dispatching systems.
Fifty percent of the rating reflects the quality of the fire department, including adequacy of equipment, sufficiency of staffing, level of training, and the geographic distribution of fire companies that comprise the department.
Evaluation of the water supply comprises the remaining 40 percent of the ISO rating. This looks at the condition and maintenance of hydrants, existence of alternative water sources, and the amount of available water, both in terms of volume and pressure, compared with the amount needed to suppress fires.
Kilpeck said businesses owners, not the homeowners, will pay a bigger premium if the ISO rating changes. Those hidden costs to the community can be devastating to a small village like Bellows Falls, with its numerous mom-and-pop businesses and its struggling economy, Kilpeck noted. And, he said, he's seen it happen.
Emergency medical system versus fire calls
The Southwestern New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid (SNHDFMA) system dispatches calls for 78 communities in the southeastern and southwestern corners of Vermont and New Hampshire, according to Joseph Sangermano, deputy chief of operations. In almost five years, “we might have added one town,” he said.
Since the agency went to a new computer-aided dispatch system, Sangermano said, the system has not been set up to differentiate types of calls, so statistics were not available. But “the majority of the calls are EMS and then fire,” he said unequivocally.
The Bellows Falls Fire Department responded to 432 EMS assists, 26 mutual-aid calls, and 49 alarm investigations.
Village firefighters responded to 14 fires inside a structure, 4 chimney fires, 15 calls involving hazardous materials, and 15 public assist calls. Banner detail and fire drills required 15 and 21 responses, respectively.
A question often asked at village meetings concerns the number of EMS assist calls.
Golden Ambulance owner Dale Girard said that having “that extra body there always helps” when it comes to moving a patient more quickly to the ambulance, or stabilizing the patient before transport.
BFFD is often closer and thus on the scene sooner than a Golden Cross ambulance can arrive to a call, according to Cenate, and firefighters help identify the problem so proper stabilizing procedures can be employed. Cenate says EMS and EMT trained staff respond to these calls.
Better solutions
Municipalities nationwide are having to look critically at their fire-protection budgets, but they are finding solutions by consolidating fire districts, rather than cutting full-time career firefighters, according to Kilpeck.
Kilpeck said other career-firefighter-staffed municipalities found that bringing EMS calls in-house strengthened their bottom lines, answering from their stations with their own crews and ambulances.
Instead of outsourcing - as Rockingham and Bellows Falls currently do - municipalities may then be paid for their mileage by insurance carriers and not paying to outsource the EMS services.
Another cost-saving measure that Kilpeck suggested: towns like Middlebury have consolidated fire districts, which can cut down on equipment costs, spreading the burden among several towns, Kilpeck said. It also means more staff can be counted on, he added.
Kilpeck said another solution some municipalities in Vermont have gone to is hiring an administrator to handle the increasing paperwork “fire departments are required to do now. It's a full-time job in itself,” he said.
“You [could] consolidate two or three towns, and put one chief in charge of administration, with an assistant chief running station,” Kilpeck added. “When you consolidate all the administrative stuff, then you could consolidate on equipment, such as extrication tools, so you can have one set that covers a whole area.”
“Such administrators may answer to one fire chief, but work with all the deputy fire chiefs within a fire district,” Kilpeck explained.
Volunteerism versus career
Kilpeck said that volunteerism, which has seen a decline in all aspects of public life from the Red Cross to Boy Scouts, is also being seen in a decline in the number of volunteer firefighters, a point backed up by statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ken Willette, division manager for National Public Fire Protection Division, noted a slight increase in career firefighters being hired, a possible trend that he said might reflect the need for more experienced firefighters in an ailing all-volunteer firehouse.
He cited some realities of modern life: families struggle to maintain two or more jobs, employers are less and less willing to release volunteers to respond to calls, and the pool of local volunteers is aging and shrinking. So career-firefighters are being called back from retirement, or called in to consult, Willette said.
In Vermont, “There are 243 fire departments, total, and 14 that are all volunteer, with one true career department in Burlington,” Kilpeck said.
The other “combination” fire departments are comprised of a blend of “minimal career staff, and staffed mostly by call people,” Kilpeck said. The call people are usually combinations of paid-call and volunteers.
“Municipalities are having a hard time because the tax base isn't there,” he added. “We've lost so much industry, and we don't have the jobs to keep people here and keep them working in town.”
Kilpeck said that “firefighters are having to travel now for work.” As a result, response time to a fire call is longer - and that's only if they are allowed to leave work in the first place to respond.
And, Kilpeck said, the increasing numbers of older and retired career firefighters being called upon in those circumstances no longer can perform the same duties younger firefighters can.
He had some words of caution for Bellows Falls.
“Once you let go of services, they are nearly impossible to replace,” Kilpeck said, noting the decline in career firefighters coming up through the ranks, and the cost of outsourcing that same coverage, should the municipalities decide to change back. “You will never get that level of experience back.”