By Mike Grogan
The Ledger
DAVENPORT, Fla. — The current rift between the city and its volunteer firefighters had Mayor Pete Rust questioning the economics of maintaining a separate paid fire department during a city commission workshop meeting Monday evening.
“Is this town big enough to support a paid fire department?” Rust asked. “Could we save $150,000 in salaries by going back to a volunteer fire department?”
His questions came as the commissioners decide whether to pass an ordinance that would force its volunteer firefighters to resign their positions and reapply to the city. That part of the ordinance is designed to put the volunteers under the control of the city manager and recently hired part-time fire administrator.
Davenport’s fire department was made up mostly of volunteers until after the hurricane season of 2004, when three storms hit the area. Since then the city has brought on six full-time paid firefighters.
Last October the city hired Stuart McCutcheon as fire administrator to serve as the department head for the fire department. The fire department had been in danger of being taken over by Polk County only a few months before.
In early 2009, the commissioners listened to a plan from the Polk County Fire Service to have the county take over the city’s fire department as a cost-saving move for the city. But local residents crowded commission chambers to let their elected officials know they wanted their own fire department and were willing to pay to keep it.
Besides the six full-time firefighters, the city has maintained a force of 17 volunteers that has its own chief and operates as a non-profit organization.
The ordinance proposed by McCutcheon and City Manager Amy Arrington to have the volunteers re-apply passed on first reading in January. That was despite heated protests from the volunteers who indicated most of them would not re-apply because they felt that the city was trying to get rid of them.
Rust and other commissioners have said that disbanding the volunteers is the furthest thing from their minds and Arrington agreed to meet with the volunteers to see if things could be worked out before the ordinance comes up for a second and final vote Feb. 22.
Arrington and McCutcheon met with a small number of volunteers Monday afternoon, a meeting she described as “positive” and said they will be meeting again next week.
Meanwhile, Commissioner H.B. Robinson III, the only one to vote against the re-application ordinance during its first reading, told the workshop gathering that he feared losing the volunteer force. He pointed to the fact that Davenport’s paid firefighters earn much lower salaries than those working in surrounding cities and the county, and could be lured away.
“Can we afford losing our volunteers?” he asked, saying the city could end up not having a fire department at all if the paid firefighters were hired away and there were no volunteers to provide emergency services.
That’s when Rust questioned whether the city should be considering returning to an all-volunteer department.
“I don’t know,” he said in response to his own question.
The question, however, was left hanging until Arrington meets with the volunteers again and the commission holds its second public hearing on the issue Feb. 22.
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