Cooperation needed to solve fire agreement

I have lived in Whitefish for 51-plus years, and I do pay property taxes in the city and in the county. It has been my good fortune to be able to serve this community on many different boards and volunteer organizations.

One of the most enjoyable was serving with the Whitefish Volunteer Fire Department, also serving a stint as its president and fire chief. Because of this time served, I feel that I can make these comments with some degree of knowledge about the city of Whitefish and the rural fire department not quite getting together on a financial agreement for a continued mutual agreement.

When I first joined the Whitefish Volunteer Fire Department in 1968, there was no rural fire department. A short time later, the city council and fire department decided to accept individual fire protection contracts from Whitefish rural property owners.

If a rural property owner did not have a contract with the city and they had a fire, we were required to stand by (protect the adjoining property if it was covered) and watch the non-contract property burn.

This would be gut-wrenching to do, and people would be at their driveway with a check in hand once the fire started, pleading with us to give them a contract. However, we could not accept their money after the fire had started.

So a better system developed into the rural fire service area, known as the Whitefish Fire Service Area that we have today, which is a very good one. We went to a flat-fee basis, collected on your property tax bill, as most of the area around Whitefish was rural farm land. The expansion of the many homes outside of the Whitefish city limits had not started.

This has worked very well for these many years. In fact, all of the new fire trucks purchased during this period, as well as the fire training building at the rural fire station, have been paid for with rural fire funds. Also, much of the incidental equipment was purchased with rural fire funds. All of this meant that the city of Whitefish did not have to float any bonds to pay for all of this equipment during these years.

Now we are talking about separating the rural from the city. We cannot afford to do this. Both the city of Whitefish and rural Whitefish will lose big time. At present, we now have a 24/7 highly-trained fire and paramedic department with an outstanding chief (Tom Kennelly) and assistant chief/fire marshal (Doug Loy).

These fine professionals are backed up by an excellent volunteer rural fire department. We have the very best of both worlds. From our excellent new fire house, they can quickly cover north, east, south and west of Whitefish, with the rural volunteer department backing them up as needed.

Now, you cannot show me that this will work for the same cost if we separate. Our rural station, at Hodgson Road and Whitefish Stage Road, would not be able to quickly cover north and west of Whitefish. We would have to build stations west and north of town. Cost $2 million to $3 million? Then equip all of the stations with trucks and equipment.

$3 million? And this would just equip them at basic level. Then you would need at least a total of 75 volunteer men and women. And in today's world, to meet all of the federal and state requirements, the hundreds of hours of training needed would make it very difficult to find that many first responders.

Now the other side. I do not believe that you can show me where the city of Whitefish will save an actual $250,000 in cash savings by not responding to rural fires other than on a mutual aid basis. In real life, I doubt that they would save $10,000 in fuel and maintenance.

Now we have the new emergency service facility, the budget is in the hole. Where is the $250,000 plus going to come from if we separate? Higher taxes? Reduce the size of the fire department?

I for one do not want to see us go backwards, I do not want to lose even one fireman. We have finally reached a point where we have an outstanding 24/7 fire department and an excellent rural volunteer fire department that together gives our wonderful community the service and protection that we all want.

Let's all ask the city of Whitefish and the rural fire department to come back to the table and reach an agreement because we need each other. They can do it. Maybe now that we have so many rural homes and much less true farm land, we need to consider changing from a rural fire service area (flat rate, one fits all) to a fire district (mill levy) to fund the rural fire department.

Bob DePratu lives in Whitefish.