Germantown officials say the change is necessary because of dispatching and a shortage of volunteers.
By William G. Schmidt
Dayton Daily News (Ohio)
Copyright 2007 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.
GERMANTOWN, Ohio — Sometime this spring, the Germantown Rescue Squad and the Germantown Fire Department will merge.
A target date of March 1, set partly because of the village’s switch to a new dispatching system through the Montgomery Country Sheriff’s Office, will probably slide into April, according to Germantown Village Manager Randy Bukas.
“That was our initial goal anyway,” Bukas said. “We might have been too aggressive.”
Dispatching is one of the reasons that discussions of the merger began. Initially, the sheriff’s office said it wouldn’t dispatch calls for a private entity.
Germantown Rescue Squad Chief Bev Campbell said there was more to it than that. She said getting the number of volunteers the organization needs has been getting more difficult.
“Any place that’s a volunteer organization, it’s hard to get personnel,” Campbell said.
The Germantown Rescue Squad, which has operated for more than half a century in the village, will maintain its own identity in its own division of the fire department, even after the merger is completed.
A meeting was held at the Germantown Senior Center on Dec. 21, attended by Bukas, Campbell and members of the Germantown council and others, to discuss the merger. In a prepared statement, Campbell said the squad had been discussing a possible merger as early as last November.
The Germantown Rescue Squad’s 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daytime shift is paid employees, and that will continue with the village, Bukas said.
“We have a shortage of EMTs (emergency medical technicians) during the daytime,” he said. “We’re training about 10 of our current firefighters to be EMTs.”
While Campbell said she’s sad to see the Germantown Rescue Squad discontinue operating as a separate entity, she said the change was necessary. “We intend to keep our name,” she said.
And while Bukas said the merger will create more work for the village — there will be more people to manage — the public will benefit from the additional personnel.
“The level of service will be the same,” Bukas said, “or maybe even improve.”