I recently spent a considerable amount of time explaining to a reporter how volunteer fire departments are funded — and I realized it is all rather silly. Volunteer departments are saving the communities they serve millions of dollars every year, yet we still have to flip pancakes and call bingo numbers to keep the doors open and trucks running.
Volunteer departments may have been able to pay for everything decades ago when trucks were thousands of dollars. But now they set you back hundreds of thousands of dollars, that is a lot of pancakes. Some communities have been great and provide everything the fire department needs, and I applaud them.
But the issue is with those who haven’t. Volunteer departments have provided the lion’s share of their funding for hundreds of years in order to help their neighbors, but unfortunately their neighbors, or the community they serve, have not always helped them. This may be due to a misunderstanding on both sides as the neighbors think their taxes pay for the service and the town thinks that the department is funded by donations.
The fire service is a basic public service, which should, and in most cases must, be provided by the local government. Fire departments should have a written contract or enabling legislation that stipulates that they are the primary service provider for the area, and therefore have taken on the burden of providing this basic service.
The problem is that some local governments consider having an agreement with the local department is the end of their responsibility — but it is only the beginning. Volunteer fire departments are ultimately responsible for staffing, and prevention of, or response to, emergencies. This core function is the same in paid departments, and the only thing the community is going to get from a paid department.
Each volunteer department saves the community millions of dollars, yet the communities are still asking for us to flip pancakes to pay for our apparatus, supplies and buildings. This short-sighted approach by some communities is going to cost them in the long run. Each volunteer has a limited amount of time they can donate to the department and ultimately to the community they serve. Available time
Community pays
The end result is that the community has to pay for paid staff, costing millions every year, in addition to providing the equipment, apparatus and buildings, or lose their fire coverage. Our local governments, just like the fire service, are great at responding to problems, but not necessarily in preventing them.
Local governments are often elected for a short period of time, and raising taxes to pay for basic firefighting equipment may cost them their next election. Additionally, if they do not plan on being in office for more than five to 10 years, they see this fire service issue as someone else’s problem and something for the new mayor/council or whoever to deal with. A small tax hike now to support the volunteer department may actually prevent or delay a much larger tax hike when the community goes paid, but this is difficult for some to understand.
The reason for the lack of understanding is that as a fire service we have done ourselves a disservice by not explaining the issue to those we serve. Fire departments have this bad habit of not wanting to share our problems with the public as we may not want to panic them. But our local government and community need to be educated on the cost savings of having a volunteer department and the cost of the equipment we use.
The National Volunteer Fire Council has lots of resources for demonstrating the cost savings and a little creativity can show the public the true cost of equipment. A great eye opener is to have an open house and put a price tag on every item the department has bought, along with the corresponding number of pancakes that need to be sold (or total fundraising man-hours) so that the public understands where their money goes. Some departments still have their individual members buy their equipment and if this is the case, each member should show the public how much they spend on a yearly basis just to volunteer!
It is time to stand up for ourselves, educate our communities and tell them to fund us. If they say they cannot afford to do so, then they need to understand the true cost. If they still cannot fund the department, unfortunately the community is in danger and may need a more creative solution such as regional services or the like. We cannot continue to provide a professional level of services as a volunteer if we are not supported. Challenge your community to give as much as you do to protect them and reap the benefits for your organization.
We are asking our volunteers to spend hundreds of hours training just to respond to calls and maintain competency, which eats up much of their available time. The communities that do not fund their departments are asking these same members to give up their weekends or nights to raise the funds to pay for equipment. It means that between training and fundraising, many members have “spent” all of their available time and may no longer want to, or even be able to, respond to calls!