Fire Company Politics

[gladevfd]

My township Volunteer Fire Department is currently in discussion with the Mayor of our neighboring City regarding automatic response by the City Fire Department to two buildings in our district. The Mayor is requiring that the City be compensated by the Township Supervisors for automatic response to these buildings. These 2 buildings consist of an extended care facility and a large complex containing a High School, Vocational Technical School, a Technology School and a proposed Elementary School with the possibility of 650 children.
I am attempting to find out how the other paid fire departments are handling automatic mutual aid to other fire departments in their area. Any information regarding contracts, agreements or compensation that you have with your surrounding fire departments you could provide me would be very beneficial in this discussion. I would like to stress that the Volunteer Fire Department has a long history of working closely with the City Fire Department.

[DRA177]

I'm not real sure why your department is discussing this matter with the mayor and not the city fire chief. It's really a no brainer, but the mayor has no clue as to the resources needed to control such an emergency. All the departments with in our county have mutal aid agreements. They are working on closes unit response, which removes the boundaries between departments. Our department does have automatic aid to a smaller paid/vol. department as well as a lager city department thats four times our size. It's all about resources, all departments at one time or another will require outside resources to control an incident. Our mutual aid agreements do not require compensation from either side. It's understood that one is willing to give help, because one will need help one day. That city mayor is an idiot in my book and should not have his nose in the operational running of the fire department. If you want a copy of our agreements let me know, I'll dig one out.


CaptD