Village to take closer look at fire service options

The Fredonia Village Board wants the authors of  a study suggesting the days of volunteer fire service may be numbered to do a deeper dive on the budgetary effects and impacts on fire service if the Belgium, Fredonia and Waubeka fire services were to combine in some fashion.

“I would like to see more detail on merging the three northern (Ozaukee County) departments,” Trustee Dan Gehrke told Rob Henken, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which completed the study examining the county’s nine fire departments.

The study offers six options to deal with staffing and service difficulties being faced by all departments.

These range from pooling resources to hire several full-time paramedics, to merging some departments with others based on what part of the county they serve, to creating a single countywide fire department.

The study was presented March 11 to fire chiefs and officials from each Ozaukee County municipalities. Since then, Henken has made presentations to each of the communities to get their input.

“Based on your call volume, there would be no justification to maintain full-time staff” in the northern departments, Henken told village trustees.

However, Fredonia Fire Chief Brian Weyker said a dearth of department volunteers suggests that paid staff may have to be considered.

While the call volume for the three departments is about a quarter of Mequon’s, Fredonia’s volume increased 34.2% from 2015 to 2019, the biggest increase in the county, while Belgium’s rose 20.5% but Waubeka’s fell 4.9%, according to the study.

 Belgium and Waubeka are the only fully volunteer fire departments in the county, though the Waubeka department just recently instituted a plan to pay firefighters a stipend.

Most other departments, including Fredonia, rely on paid-on-call staff. Grafton uses a combination of full-time and paid-on-call members.

Belgium lacks an ambulance and contracts with the Port Washington and Fredonia departments for that service.

Of the consolidation options, two departments would merge services, as is currently happening with Grafton and Saukville. In that case, Fredonia and Waubeka might merge and Belgium would join with Port Washington. Or Belgium, Fredonia and Waubeka could form one department.

Under another consolidation plan, the Belgium, Fredonia and Waubeka departments would be combined with Port Washington to form a northern county fire department while the other five would form a southern county department.

The final, and most expensive, option would create a single countywide department.

Henken told the Fredonia board that his group will come back with a more detailed analysis of the financial impact of proposed changes.