Think Tank Formed to Combat Decline of Available Firefighters

by Matt Hongoltz-Hetling
     
     BUCKFIELD – A think tank of town leaders and fire department personnel from the region met last Wednesday to brainstorm ways to combat severe declines in the number of available volunteer firefighters, a problem that is particularly bad during daytime weekday hours.
     
     Buckfield Manager Glen Holmes, who helped to organize the effort, was enthusiastic about the ideas he had heard at the meeting.
     
     It went fantastic,” he said.
     
     Sumner Selectwoman Mary Ann Haxton said that the meeting went well, and that it was time for a regional solution to be implemented.
     
     “Something needs to happen,” said Haxton, “but we have to see what really could work.”
     
     The committee identified several ideas as being worth further review.
     
     Some ideas centered around the idea of a town maximizing their existing staff. Cross training other rescue personnel and public works employees would be one way to bolster the volunteer staffs.
     
     In one plan, towns would try to convince local employers to let their volunteer employees be “on call” on certain days, when they would be allowed to respond to fires. In exchange, the towns would pay these firefighters a nominal rate of $3 per hour for being on call. The hope is that employers would benefit by increased loyalty from their employees, who would be making more money at their job without costing the employer anything.
     
     Several other ideas focused on coordinating and regionalizing firefighter responses.
     
     Haxton said that there was significant interest in the idea of towns cooperating to maximize the benefit of a paid firefighter. Paris recently added three “per diem” firefighters to their crew, who receive an hourly wage to be on call in the fire house during critical daytime hours.
     
     One concept that drew interest was “the idea of trying to cooperate choosing per diems, and whether there were towns that could share a per diem,” said Haxton.
     
     In one scenario, towns would pool municipal resources to create a mobile, rotating team of paid personnel. In another, towns would adopt a buddy system that would allow them to effectively share their resources.
     
     There was also talk of coordinating equipment purchases to reduce unnecessary redundancies. Yet another idea was to merge existing fire and rescue departments.
     
     “A discussion needs to take place in the fire departments,” said Haxton. “That needs to be the next step.”
     
     Haxton said that small towns like Sumner, which had only 330 households during the last census, are particularly hard-pressed to come up with funds for municipal services like firefighters.
     
     “We would support some cooperation because the finances are a significant consideration for us,” she said. “I think it's clear the tax base base we have is fairly restricted with what we can do. We don't have a public works department, and we're a town that manages very minimal municipal resources.”
     
     The meeting was attended by representatives from Buckfield, Paris, Hebron, Turner, Sumner, and Hartford.
     
     When the group meets next on September 22, the representative towns will bring various papers to document their town's fire department budgets, types of personnel, and call types and locations. The committee will also review a map that will demonstrate the distances between the stations.