5 southeast Portage County townships consider forming a joint fire district

Five townships. Five fire chiefs. Five fire stations. Finances so tight that equipment is often purchased secondhand and departments rely on part-time and volunteer personnel. Sometimes stations aren’t staffed at all.

Looking at his township’s fire station, Edinburg Trustee Jeff Bixler believes there must be a better way. He also believes he knows what it is: a joint fire district that would combine resources and provide quick service to Edinburg, Paris, Palmyra, Charlestown and Deerfield townships.

Bixler, Charlestown Fire Chief Randy Porter, a designated trustee from each township and other fire chiefs from most of the county’s southeastern townships have been meeting every month or so to iron out details and discuss all aspects of the proposed fire district. Edinburg Fiscal Officer Bill McCluskey records the proceeds, which are open to the public.

Bixler anticipates about three years of meetings before the board is ready to submit a formal joint fire district proposal to voters. Then a simple majority would rule at the ballot box.

The idea has been raised twice before, but never gained traction, Bixler said. The county’s southern townships rejected one attempt in the 1990s because they feared a loss of identity at being swallowed up by a multi-township fire district. A similar attempt in the early 2000s also failed.

Now may be different. Bixler believes township trustees see the need for a change as the volunteer pool dwindles and those that do volunteer have less time to devote. He and Porter have been making the rounds of all the townships, explaining how a joint fire district would work and how it would benefit everyone.

In firefighter and EMS-speak, benefit equals time, and time equals lives and property. A joint fire district would increase the townships’ ability to respond in a timely manner, Bixler said.

“Residents aren’t calling because they’re feeling a little bad. They’re calling because they have an emergency,” Bixler said.

Should a joint fire district, or JFD, be established, townships would no longer have their own fire chiefs or fire stations: the fire district’s board would select its own chief and station locations. Townships would also not have their own equipment, from tankers and pumpers to oxygen tanks and turnout gear.

All of that already belongs to the townships, which could sell everything, including the stations themselves, Bixler said.

“This is a sensitive thing,” he acknowledged. “All of the townships have been very proud of their fire departments.”

Each township’s fire station would initially remain open and staffed, but most would close as soon as the district found its feet. Should specific township trustees wish to maintain a station, it would be at the township’s expense, not the fire district’s, Bixler said.

Bixler envisions the fire district initially supporting at least two fire stations, each staffed round the clock with four people: full-time and part-time employees, as well as volunteers. He anticipates each station being outfitted with a tanker, a pumper, one grass truck to access field and brush fire and other inaccessible areas, and two ambulances.

A fire district board would consist of an appointed trustee-liaison from each of the member townships. The board’s authority would be similar to those of township trustees, including but not limited to requesting funding levies. How big those levies would be remains to be seen, but their cost would be balanced against individual townships no longer floating their own levies. 

Those levies would disappear a year after the fire district’s levies would take effect, and be timed in such a way that at no time would a resident be paying on both a township fire or EMS levy and one from the JFD, he said.

Until a JFD is established, Bixler asked township voters to continue supporting their local fire departments.

“If they do not support those levies, the townships are already struggling to keep their fire and emergency services operating. If something would happen that they would lose those levies and the levies that they’re asking for, the services to the township residents would be seriously impeded,” he said.

To determine where fire district stations would be located, Bixler has asked each township to supply its call logs for the past three years. The data will be analyzed, and the stations would be centrally located in “hot spots,” he said.

The fire district might purchase or lease an existing station in one or two townships, depending on the state of the station and where the hot spots turn out to be. Future development could change those hot spots and could require the fire district to build another station, Bixler said.

Bixler does not yet know the exact dollar amounts attached to establishing a district, but said a township might offset its contribution by donating a needed piece of equipment or building. That’s not nothing: a new or updated fire station can cost $4 million to $5 million. New tankers and pumpers hover around $1 million, with a three- to four-year delivery window, he said.

The only other joint fire districts in Portage County are the Mantua-Shalersville and the Garrettsville-Freedom-Nelson JFDs.

Paris Township

The Paris Township Fire Department is staffed seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with two part-time personnel. Serving as first responders are seven part-time and two volunteer firefighter/EMTs. When the station is closed, the department’s dispatch center pages members, who are paid on a per-call basis.

If a JFD would cost more than township taxpayers are paying now, or if it would mean the closure of one or more township fire stations, Paris Fire Chief Derek Reed said he could foresee townships opting out.

If people understood they would benefit from 24/7 coverage, though, they may support a JFD, he said.

“There’s a lot of unknowns, and we’re not really sure where things are going to go right now,” he said.

Charlestown Township

Charlestown’s fire department runs on a completely volunteer basis, Porter said. Emergency calls go to the Portage County Sheriff’s Office, which sends the calls to the city of Ravenna’s dispatch center, which then pages the CVFD’s 16 volunteers.

A joint fire district would “reduce the duplication of apparatus and it will hopefully increase the number of people available. Instead of five separate communities sharing the responsibility, we would all be one big department,” Porter said.

Opposition might come from people wary of the township losing its identity, from people wanting their tax dollars to stay in Charlestown instead of being routed to a multi-district entity, and from voter pushback at the township losing control over its department, he said.

People need to know, though, that their fire district tax dollars would continue to benefit their specific communities and that they would retain a measure of control. They also need to understand that their townships would be represented by their trustee-liaison’s voice, he said.

Acknowledging that there may be discord when a piece of equipment is bound for one community and not another, Porter said it would be important to see the bigger picture.

“It’s benefiting the entire district, no matter where the apparatus goes, no matter where the personnel go,” he said.

Palmyra Township 

Palmyra’s fire station is staffed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekends, though township Trustee Tom Grund acknowledged that there are open shifts when no one is available to work.

Should none of the fire department’s 11 members be available when a call comes in, Ravenna’s dispatch center implements a “call next” protocol: Palmyra’s first responders have minutes to acknowledge a call. If they don’t, neighboring communities are contacted for mutual aid.

A joint fire district would ideally combine resources so all member townships would benefit from  faster, more effective service, Grund said, anticipating a years-long planning process that, as of now, is currently in the “brainstorming” stage.

“As this moves forward, we will have more community discussions about it so we can get the opinion of our voters, but I feel we’re a good distance away from that yet,” Grund said.

Edinburg Township

Edinburg’s fire station is staffed 24/7 with two part-time employees, Fire Chief Jesse Baughman said. There are 18 firefighters/EMTs on the roster altogether.

Remembering the days of township firefighters taking second mortgages on their home so they could outfit a volunteer department, he said he understood people seeing a joint fire district as a loss of identity.

“People gave up a lot of things, made a lot of sacrifices to be able to establish a fire department,” he said. “They have a lot invested in it. Maybe they weren’t on the fire department, but they knew someone that was, maybe a family member or a neighbor, that they have fond memories of.”

Even so, he said the conversations he’s had with Edinburg residents have all been positive.

“It will definitely increase the reliability of service. It will increase the level of certification. Instead of each township fending for themselves with their own resources and duplicating a lot of resources, we’ll be able to combine a lot of resources and utilize them for the good that way,” he said. 

Deerfield Township

Deerfield Township’s fire station is staffed with one person 24/7. The person on staff may respond to a call individually, which does leave the station unattended, Deerfield Fire Chief Scott Dean said.

Regardless, all calls go to all of the department’s 28 volunteers, who may respond on a paid-per-call basis, he said.

The fire chief said he’d attended one meeting about the proposed joint fire district in Edinburg, had listened to Porter when he spoke to Deerfield’s trustees in open meeting and was in attendance when Porter spoke to Deerfield fire volunteers at the township station.

Fire department members in May sent a letter to township trustees in which they voiced their opposition to a joint fire district, and said they do not wish to join it if it should be established.

“Our taxpayers have created and supplied our community with the tools needed in case of an emergency,” the letter stated. “With the district, we would no longer have a station staffed at Deerfield and would have to rely on emergency services coming from other jurisdictions to Deerfield residences. This can and would lead to loss of property and life.”