Some Fire Departments only have meetings once a month, Personally I think You should have one every week on a set day of the week. I know my fire dept, we have one every MOnday night at 7:00pm. What do you think. Our Fire meetings also count towards our required 36 hours of training each year.
We have general meetings on3rd thurs of the month, trainings on 1st & 4th thurs & 2nd sun. 2nd thurs is open for ea comp to do their own as well as the 4th sun. we have training at the county fire academy once a month from april/may til oct. and they encourage us to take extra training classes offered by the county.
We meet every Monday night. A typical meeting night consist of truck & equipment checks, some type of training, discussing any problems or issues that arose the previous week, anything coming up in the future, anything that needs to be handled. We are a small town volunteer unit and prior to me taking Chief at the beginning of the year we was only meeting the first & third Monday of the month. During the weeks we where not meeting too much was going unattended. Trucks and equipment was checked regularly, members would get confused and show up on the wrong night or not show up on the right one, issues where going too long without being addressed, the community could not keep up with our schedule whenever they wanted to approach us on an issue. Since we went back to every Monday things have gone a lot smoother.
We meet every Tues. evening, one for our business meeting, 2 for training, 1 for truck/equipment checks and when there's an extra Tues., that's used for training also. Our trainings also count for our required CE hours.
We have our trainings separate and meet once a month we sometimes have special called meetings if necessary outside our monthly meetings. Not a bad idea though
We have a company meeting for business the 2nd Tuesday of each month and cleanup/training each Monday night. During clean ups we have training at the station and clean our equipment.
We have business meetings on the first Monday of every month to discuss things like committee reports, upcoming events, bill and expenditure approvals, and so forth.
The remaining Mondays are drill nights, and we try to keep work details separate so that drill night is for drilling and not for cleaning the kitchen or mowing the lawn.
Each Monday night of the year we check the trucks whether it's meeting night or drill night.
Our fire meeting is the first Thursday of the month and then we have like 2 nights and usually a Sunday for training so that people can make their training. It still seems to be the same people showing up for the training. If we had a company meeting every week we would have no one show up. I think that is a lot to ask. I have 3 meetings in the first week of the month. the Monday before the Thursday of the company meeting I have a Board of Directors Meeting and then the first Tuesday I have my Rescue Squad Meeting and then the fire meeting and the the 3rd Tuesday is Rescue Squad training night. 2nd Tuesday of the month is fire training and then usually the 3rd Thursday is fire training and a Sunday some where in the month is another fire training day. Then of course I am on call with my squad Monday nights and then one weekend night... Oh yeah then there are all the committees that I am on that also has meetings. One company meeting a month is more then enough for me.... Just my opinion for my department anyways....
Designated regular drill is important not only to meet expectations of State training but also to accommodate your volunteers to get adequate training and schedule their time to be there. Departments that do not have regular scheduled drills or weekly drills may be lacking direction.