By DAVE SCHULTZ
The Bluffton Common Council had a special meeting Thursday evening and the seating arrangement at the front of the room was certainly unusual.
Sitting in the seats where Bluffton Mayor John Whicker and City Attorney Tony Crowell usually sit were New Haven Mayor Steve McMichael and Fire Chief Joshua Hale. They were the guests of honor Thursday night as they talked about their city’s seven-month-old fire territory, which merged fire coverage for the cities of New Haven and Woodburn and the townships around them in Allen County.
They were there at the invitation of Scott Mentzer, the Bluffton council’s president, and Mayor John Whicker. McMichael and Hale were there to explain what authorities in that area had created and how they had done it.
Bluffton now serves a fire territory that is composed of the two townships, Harrison and Lancaster, that surround the city. Even though the city is within the two townships, the city — which provides fire service for all of the townships — is not officially part of the fire territory.
Mentzer noted that the situations aren’t truly identical. If nothing else, the New Haven fire territory also provides ambulance service but neither the Bluffton Fire Department nor the townships’ fire territory does so — although an independent review of the department recently suggested that be done at some point in the future.
However, the city is facing increased financial pressure to provide fire service. The department’s salaries have gone up from $427,000 in 2021 to $1.33 million in 2022 as the city added full-time firefighters to its ranks and also boosted its salaries to retain the firefighters it has as well as give would-be firefighters an incentive to join the BFD.
That, plus the need for additional equipment, “places a big stress on the (city’s) General Fund,” Mentzer said.
McMichael and Hale stepped the members of the Bluffton Common Council and others who were in attendance — including some township officials — through the rationale for what they now have.
The Adams Township Fire Department in Allen County was a paid firefighting outfit while the New Haven Fire Department used to be a volunteer operation. Those departments merged and became a de facto regional operation, even though it was primarily the residents of New Haven paying the cost of fire and emergency medical service.
“I was not going to a New Haven resident and explaining that their spouse died because we were in Monroeville,” McMichael said. “We decided we need a fair and equitable way to pay for the services being provided.”
The situation at that time was that New Haven residents were paying one rate for fire and EMS service while residents of other jurisdictions were paying another rate. McMichael said that was not going to continue.
A series of meetings created the current setup in which all of the entities appoint a member of the territory’s governing board and those six individuals appoint a seventh member. The decisions evened out the payments for service, regardless of residency.
“That was a dealbreaker for me,” McMichael said. “Everyone pays the same on assessed evaluation.”
The employees are considered New Haven municipal employees.
Hale said the New Haven-area discussion began with an assessment of needs and then went into a series of conversations.
“You have to start with the fire department, then have a conversation among elected officials,” Hale said.
The meeting was intended as a “how-to” conversation as Bluffton and the townships moves forward with its fire department. No decisions were made, as the meeting was for information only.
“We are a little more educated than we were an hour ago,” Whicker said at the end of the meeting.
daves@news-banner.com
