Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Greg Binder on November 8, 2008 at 9:11pm

Is there a value in this? You state that 'What you may raise in funds and or buy equipment becomes that Muncipality property.' Maybe I look at this a different way, but a Fire Department whether private or public is by default municiple property. You can't move it sell, it, close it down for 2 weeks for a group holiday. The only advantage I can see is profit - does the Board get a performance bonus? What do you rate the bonus on? What happens if you can't meet your expenses? Our town recently created an ambulance service, they are with us now. The previous service was always going to Town Council for money money to cover shortages - 10 years in a row. The Town threatened to create its own. The owner, said 'Go ahead!', every eyar it lost money every year the town paid. Finally, the Town decided to create its own. With each shortfall in the budget came worse and worse response times.

I realize that Canadians and Americans look at services a different way. I considser Fire to be essential, I would expect it to be owned by a Government of some form.

Permalink Reply by united 289..{Dave} on November 8, 2008 at 9:58pm

What the municipality VFD does. Does become there property. We are and all vol. The board of directors get no pay. we are a non-profit organization. We are a privately operated VFD. We do not approach the village for any money at all. There fire protection is paid to us Thur a fire tax levy. same as for the twp fire coverage. We meet our expenses. We manage our money. We no what expenses we need to pay. insurance, utilities, Equipment up keep and the such. We have and account side a side to cover any unexpected expenses.

Yes fire protection is essential. We both provide a different way. Thanks for your thoughts.

Permalink Reply by Mike Young on November 9, 2008 at 4:14pm

Dave, just wanted to add some to your discussion. As you know we are owned by the Village. We operate off of the village income tax. I do not need permission to buy things. Here if we need it we buy it. Ususally if its gonna be over $3,500.00 Ill maybe go to the council meeting and explain things or Ill just let the Mayor know why I bought this. Its not as bad as you portray.My equipment fund is $25.000.00 plus and my fire general is just as well.
As you know we just passed our renewal levy and are seeking a new engine.This will as all of our trucks and equipment will become property of the village. It doesnt matter who owns or bought it. Its that you have it and its there to be used.Another thing you may consider is billing for structure fires.I started this 3-4 yrs. ago and have took in over 3,500.00.Ill send you the info if you want or stop over. I just hooked Quaker up.
Now your wandering what do we do with our fundraising money. This a seperate account from the village. Its our money.We became 501 C-3 approved and we now recv money from the Moose, Eagles etc. off the new gaming laws we have.FYI I just got a check today from the Moose for 6,400.00. We use this account to buy whatever we want. Im going to purchase a video library with some of this money and some from my general. It will belong to the village and the Dept.. So my friend these are my thoughts. FYI you can use the library anytime after we get it.
I feel being village owned or privatly owned both have ups and downs. I just look around our County. and see the smaller ones struggling to pay a bill etc. and how they rely on one festival and some raffles. I cant imagine it especially how festivals are dying in our area. My hats off to you guys. Mike

Permalink Reply by united 289..{Dave} on November 9, 2008 at 8:10pm

Thanks Mike I was hoping you would see this and respond. It is good that you have that luxury. Some don't. It's odd you mention Quaker. They have some issues there. Being Village owned. They our the opposite of what you have. They have to have approval to purchase equipment unless it is done Thur a grant or out of there funds that they have raised on there own. At least this is what I have been told in the pass. There has been some talk of going to a private department. This brings the issue of the village owning the equipment. Even though they may have bought some of that equipment out of there own funds. Plus they have some other issues that I will not go into detail here.

Yes we receive monies from the same organizations here in are county as well. This
is a great asset.

We have a 1 mill tax levy here in the twp and a 1 mill in the village. The rest comes from are fund raisers, Grants and fire contracts out of our twp and village. Between all of this we receive about 40,000.00 a year. This excludes grants. I also know what your fire levy provides for your department. If we was to have the same millage as you do we would be comparable. Yes sometimes it is a struggle. We are both better off than some departments in our area.

Yes there is pro and cons to both side of this. This what I am looking for. To have a better understanding of how VFD operate compared to others. I just know how we have to operate.

I will be in touch with you on the billing. I remember you have said something about this. I do have some question. We have actually looked at this in the pass. What we are being told that we are privately owned. We may not be permitted to bill. Haven't really pushed much on the issue to see for sure. This may be one of the down sides of private owed department. Maybe this week.

Thanks for your response.
Dave

Permalink Reply by Jenny Holderby on November 17, 2008 at 2:17am

This seems to be a trend in Ohio at least. Rome Volunteer Fire Department is a private, 501-c-3 not for profit corporation contracted to the township for fire service. They pay us a flat fee each year to provide fire protection. We have a tax levy that the township trustees oversee. We use it to purchase equipment and such. The FD raises money & applies for grants. We were fortunate enough to receive a couple of FEMA grants.

We have a mix, the department owns 1 station & 3 trucks, the township own 1 station & 3 trucks. The township leases our equipment & we lease the equipment payed for through the levy. When the township buys apparatus, we tell them what we need, draw up specs and send them out for bid. The trustees open the bids & often barter with us to bring the cost down. Our new truck has NO equipment on it other than a ladder, a couple of sections of hard suction and a couple of pike poles. But we have the equipment to put on the pumper/rescue. That was why we needed a new truck to put rescue equipment on. Some wanted a heavy rescue with no fire supression system. I personally didn't like that idea. This truck has a CAF system and is rated as a pumper and as a rescue truck. (best of both worlds).

We also have our own bylaws. Our corporation is run by an elected President, Vice President, Secretary & Treasurer. The Chief & the President work closely together because the Fire Chief has the ultimate responsiblity for the fire department. The President runs the business & the Fire Chief runs the operations. Sometimes the line between the corporation & operations is a thin one but we work things out fairly well. Lately we are piling responsibility on a few people. I think this is more of a dedication situation than anything else. We hold a yearly election for the corporate officers and the top 3 operations positions, Chief, Assistant Chief and Deputy Chief (in alternating years so we don't change all 3 @ the same time) . We elected a new Chief & Assistant Chief in Jan since the Assistant Chief became the Chief. We did elect the DC as the Vice President at that time. The President was also elected the Assistant Chief when that position came open after our AC resigned. I was appointed Safety Officer & later elected as Secretary after the secretary resigned from the department. That sounds more complicated than it really is.

We don't have a board of directors to oversee operations. We do have a board of directors who's function would be to oversee the sale of equipment if the FD would happen to fold.

The budget comes from our contract to the township, grants & fundraisers. Each year we send out a mailer for donations. We actually collected more donations by going door to door through neighborhoods in our uniforms on a fund drive but that took too long & since the area has grown would be even more time consuming. We also have a contract with DNR to fight wild land fires. I believe that is still in effect where they pay us a small sum to respond. That money goes back into the general fund.

Sometimes our budget gets really tight between contracts but that money pays our reoccuring expenses such as utilities, insurance & compensation bills.

We are 100% volunteer but there is an investigation underway of the possibility of going to "paid on call" where each person would technically be paid by the hour for attending calls. I'm not sure how that would affect our turn out during the day when we have few responders. We have good response times and an ISO of 5/9 *I think*. In our last ISO evaluation our lowest scores were in record keeping. We were shooting for a ISO of 4 but missed it by a few points.

As I said, it all sounds a lot more complicated than it really is.