By DAVE SCHULTZ
The discussion over the future of the city’s fire department will continue after a significant conversation about a recent professional report took place during Tuesday night’s council meeting.
No vote was taken, but people seemed much more amendable to talking about the department’s next move following the lengthy discussion. The air was cleared significantly, and everyone present had their say.
Four of the five council members — Josh Hunt, Roger Thornton, Rick Elwell, and Scott Mentzer (Janella Stronczek was absent) — plus Mayor John Whicker and Clerk-Treasurer Tami Runyon all made comments.
Bluffton Fire Chief Don Craig also spoke to the topic. After representatives of the McGrath Consulting Group Inc. expressed their opinions as to what the city’s fire service needed — one new fire station, no more full-time firefighters, and how it should work with Wells County EMS — Craig wrote a long email going through McGrath’s report almost point by point. Craig was asked by Whicker to lead off Tuesday night’s discussion, which he did — even though he said he really hadn’t come prepared to say anything.
Nevetheless, Craig said, he told the council that the McGrath report left a lot of questions and did not provide a lot of answers.
“I thought it took some shots at the fire department and I thought it was necessary to respond to those shots,” he said.
Craig said he still believed two fire stations — one on Spring Street next to the main Wells County EMS location and another north on Commerce Drive — should still be the city’s master plan.
“Today, do we need two stations? I don’t know,” Craig said. “But we’ve got to do something.”
Elwell, who urged the city to pay for the $32,000 McGrath study, wanted to make sure Craig knew who’s side he and the other council members were on.
“I want to say publicly that I don’t think there’s a person in this room that doesn’t support you or your deputy chief (Chris Wolf) or anyone on your department,” Elwell said.
Thornton repeated a contention he made last week that any decision to build a fire station just west of downtown, as recommended in the McGrath report, would involve the demolishing of currently-occupied houses. That, he said, was not a good move.
“I’m urging a serious review in our thinking of not just the study, but the task force report,” Thornton said, referring to the study group he led that met for nine months and recommended the construction of the two fire stations. “I think this is super important work. I think we all do.”
Mentzer said the agreements with Harrison and Lancaster townships, part of a fire territory setup, need to be rewritten so the city is not carrying what he considers to be an unfair amount of the financial burden. “You are not going to get everything you need out of the (city’s) general fund,” Mentzer said to Craig.
Hunt said that the council “has to do the best was have to do for public safety but also for the taxpayer,” he said.
As the conversation was winding down, Whicker spoke up.
“Are all of us committed to get space for a new fire station,” he said. “If we are truly committed to finding some answers to our space questions, how do we get there?”
Mentzer had earlier done some research, talking to fire chiefs in other communities about what they needed to do for their departments and communities, so Whicker assigned him some homework. He asked Mentzer to find out how other communities built their fire stations.
All agreed that the fire department needed a better record-keeping system, one of the centerpieces to the McGrath report. Craig said he’s been pushing for that for some time. Runyon suggested using American Rescue Plan funding for that purpose.
Hunt also had a suggestion — to move the police department out of the Police/Fire Building and let the fire department take over the facility. Right now, with the task force recommending two new fire stations, plans have been drawn up to expand the police department into the space that would be vacated by the fire department.
Also Tuesday night, the four council members present agreed to sign a connection agreement with the Wells County Regional Sewer District to treat effluent from Craigville when that collection system is built. The move was recommended by the Board of Works earlier in the day.
daves@news-banner.com
