Leaders react to fire report
By DAVE SCHULTZ
The presentation of the report on the Bluffton Fire Department — and, as it turns out, the Wells County Emergency Medical Service — authored by the McGrath Consulting Group Inc. will apparently be the start of a long conversation.
Roger Thornton, the Bluffton Common Council member who led a task force that reviewed the city fire service’s needs, uses some political imagery as he considers the road ahead.
“The council is made up of Republicans, and our political mascot is the elephant,” he said Thursday. “The gestation period of an elephant is 18 to 22 months. I’m sure it’s going to take about that long to bring this to fruition.”
McGrath’s report, made public Wednesday night, was authorized by members of the council last year after the Public Safety Task Force composed of community members and led by Thornton made its recommendations on staffing and facilities in May.
The task force recommended the construction of two fire stations and beefing up staffing to put four firefighters on duty on a 24/7 basis. Council members — with Thornton providing the lone “no” vote, authorized a $32,000 review of fire department matters from McGrath to give an outsider’s view of matters.
So city leaders can now choose from competing viewpoints. While the McGrath representatives praised the work done by the Public Safety Task Force, they emphasized that their recommendations were contrary to what the task force’s were. While there were several points made in the 227-page report, key among them were a recommendation for only one fire station and no additional full-time staffing.
Critics of McGrath’s findings center on a perceived lack of details. For instance, the recommendation for one new station suggests that the optimum location would be somewhere west of downtown. “Such a decision as this may result in the potential for purchase of existing property, razing, and construction of the new fire station,” the report states. “However, this option would certainly be financially less than constructing two separate fire stations.”
That didn’t sit well with Thornton, or with Mayor John Whicker, either.
Whicker brought up the specter of eminent domain, the forcible taking of land for the common good. Such a move might be necessary because there is currently no site that meets McGrath’s criteria of being just west of the city’s downtown district. Houses would have to be purchased and razed, to use McGrath’s word, to make the facility possible.
“Where would we put a central station?” Whicker asked.
The mayor also said the report did not fully explain the decision for one fire station instead of two.
Thornton said he had looked and there were nine houses currently for sale in Wells County. If the city has to buy up a block worth of residences to make a central fire station possible, where will the residents of those houses go to?
Whicker was the one who chose the members of the Public Safety Task Force, asking for volunteer service from a collection of business leaders (Eric Gerber, Steve Gerber, and Chip Mann), the current fire chief and deputy fire chief (Don Craig and Chris Wolf), the township trustees of Harrison and Lancaster townships (Kyle Hunt and the late Marcia Meyer), and then he tabbed Thornton to lead the group. He referred to it as a “blue-chip group,” noting that it had put a great deal of work into its recommendation.
When asked if he stood behind the task force’s recommendations, he said he did.
The McGrath report called for better records management for the fire department and strongly recommended better efforts in terms of fire prevention and public education. Tim McGrath, Ph.D., the CEO of the company that bears his name, also pushed for consolidation of the city’s fire department with Wells County EMS.
Rick Elwell, the council member who proposed hiring McGrath to study the city’s fire service, described his reaction to the McGrath report as “a little mixed.”
“We have some more work to do,” Elwell said Thursday. He agreed with McGrath’s recommendations for better risk management and fire prevention, and sees some merit into a collaboration with EMS because right now 62 percent of fire runs are medical assists.
Elwell also noted that McGrath’s report praised the BFD as a “really great professional department.”
Nevertheless, he said, “we knew there were some holes in things” but that “we have to keep a keen eye on the budget.”
Having an outside review of the department, Elwell said, will be helpful going forward.
Craig, chief of the Bluffton Fire Department, said Thursday he had read McGrath’s report twice and that he had written out nine pages of handwritten notes. He did not want to talk about his impressions of the report until he had put his observations together into a comprehensive email to all council members.
He did say, however, that there were “a lot of contradictions” in the study. He figured to complete his analysis of the McGrath report on Friday.
daves@news-banner.com
