Town is cool on plan to combine fire departments

Combining emergency medical services to attract paid first responders and reduce response times was nearly a no-brainer for northern Ozaukee County fire departments of Belgium, Fredonia and Waubeka.

Discussions on that effort during the past couple years garnered questions but not criticism given the increasing number of medical calls and shrinking volunteer pool to handle them.

Combining fire departments in the same manner is getting more pushback.

A meeting of the Joint Fire/EMS Committee on Monday involving the villages and towns of Belgium and Fredonia introduced the draft of an initial agreement to combine the departments that serve those communities, but the Town of Fredonia, unlike the EMS contract, wasn’t part of it.

The privately held Waubeka Fire Department serves the town, and Chief Jason Caswell isn’t interested in becoming part of the larger entity.

“It’s losing our identity,” Caswell said after the meeting. “Everything we built goes away. It’s going to be very different.”

As far as volunteers go, Caswell said, the department is “holding its own.”

Belgium Fire Chief Pat Wester voiced concerns about the financing model during the meeting.

“With Belgium being a private fire department, we own our own equipment, we own our own building, everything ourselves. We’re responsible for our own insurance on the vehicles, our own worker’s comp insurance, any expenditures that aren’t budgeted that are unforeseen.

“If this goes through, how does that look if we’re responsible for those expenses?” he asked.

Town of Belgium Chairman Tom Winker said, “The Belgium area Fire Department building, that’s going to be part of, let’s just call it the Northern Ozaukee Fire Service Ambulance Service, and that would certainly come out of that whole pool of money. You’re not going to be stuck financing your own deal.”

Ozaukee County gave a grant to the northern Ozaukee entity for $648,000 that has to be spent by the end of 2025.

“At that time, we will have to come up with some way to fund this,” Winker said.

Wester said he struggles to see the benefit of combining fire departments since nothing would change the quality of fire protection.

While the volunteer group of firefighters may be strong now, Winker said, that may fade in time, which is why the group is talking about consolidating.

Fredonia Village Trustee Don Dohrwardt asked if the new fire department would be limited to Ozaukee County or if it could expand into southern Sheboygan County.

“I certainly think there could be a possibility down the road that we could look at them,” Winker said. “I’m very close friends with the chief out of Silver Creek. I will tell you right now — you chiefs need to hear this — they don’t have any problems getting volunteers. They’re a vibrant, small volunteer fire department.”

“We didn’t either 12 years ago,” Dohrwardt said.

Caswell said he expects the combined department to become a full-time entity.

“You’re not going to wind up with three fire departments operating as one,” he said.

“This is something that’s going to take a while to do all of this,” Winker said. “This ain’t gonna happen this year. It probably ain’t gonna happen next year, but we have to start the process.”