Volunteers often assume people love them, but hostile takeover attempts against volunteer fire departments are all too common. Learn to recognize the warning signs; become familiar with long-term defense strategies; and develop strategies for immediate survival, including legal strategies. The importance of training in how to enhance the perception of professionalism cannot be overemphasized.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
No two fire departments are exactly alike, and that’s doubly true for volunteer fire departments. For reasons of history, evolution, psychology, and so forth, we’re all a little different. Sometimes that works to our advantage. Sometimes not. Sometimes our differences can become dividing lines. When that happens. the department becomes fertile ground for politicians to exploit. And by politicians, I don’t just mean those elected to public office. Sometimes the agitators can be other departments that feel they compete with you, career firefighters who live in your community but are not a part of your department, or people from within your own department.
Agitators can be good. Sometimes they’re right to want change. But, when the effort to effect constructive change crosses over into the outright destruction or takeover of a department, that’s bad.
BURRVILLE AND DRAKEVILLE (TORRINGTON), CONNECTICUT
For many years, the City of Torrington had two tax districts. One was the inner city. The other was the outer core-the first layer of suburbs in what is now a sprawling metropolitan area. For all this time, volunteer departments served the suburbs, a career department served the inner city, and everybody knew their turf. Then, the tax districts were consolidated.
The volunteers figured, “Big deal. So, we’ll now get garbage collection and automatic mutual aid. This is going to be wonderful! We’ll get the same help and support, and we’ll get it faster than ever.”
But, the career fire department saw it differently. It felt its territory had been expanded. Over time it began to see the volunteers not as equals but as simply the reserve.
The flashpoint was an attempt by the career chief to impose training requirements on the volunteers. The ignition point was the Friday night the city-run dispatch center stopped dispatching the volunteer fire departments.
What saved the Burrville and Drakeville Fire Departments was not just the judge who ordered the resumption of dispatch or their lawyer who drew up the papers. What saved Burrville and Drakeville was that they in fact had reasonably good training records and were able to beat back the notion that they were a bunch of firefighting incompetents. What’s more, they were open to a voluntary Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection, which showed that in some areas they were in even better shape than the career department.
It didn’t hurt that the departments owned their own land, their own fire stations, and their own fire trucks-and that they knew their legal rights and were prepared to defend them.
But, ultimately, the Torrington scenario involved public relations, not just at the level of local politics but also within the combined firefighting community. What the training records showed was that regardless of other differences, the volunteers were trained professionals. In the face of the salient fact, all the other differences fell by the wayside. The career and the volunteer departments are now at peace with each other, and the leadership at the career department has changed.
STAFFORD SPRINGS, CONNECTICUT
Similar to Torrington, a precipitating factor in Stafford Springs was the consolidation of tax districts. In this case, the inner city again had a career department. The suburbs again had volunteer departments. But in this instance, the political power was shifting the other way-from the inner city to the suburbs.
In preparation, the inner city disbanded its career department; reconstituted it as a private, nonprofit volunteer fire department; turned over all the apparatus to this new volunteer fire department; gave it a long-term lease on the fire station; and promised to give the department land for a new fire station if it wanted one down the road. The city also agreed to lump-sum payments annually for a period that happened to match the lease.
Then, the inner city and the suburbs merged. During the life of the contract, the new town government honored all the arrangements. But when the contract was over, the town locked the doors and, after passing an ordinance dividing the town between the two original fire departments, redistributed territory, facilities, and equipment. The Stafford Springs Fire Department has never been paid for its equipment and is no longer fighting fires.
Not much can be said, yet, with regard to the various legal theories advanced, since parts of the case are still pending in court. Also, it was the department itself that initially determined not to contest the validity of the new ordinance beyond getting paid for its apparatus and equipment and hoping the price tag would shock the town into realizing it had made an expensive mistake. By the time the department got around to challenging the new ordinance, the court had ruled it was too late for the department to change its mind about strategy.
Ultimately, this was a public relations battle and a disaster for the department because the battle lines were drawn around the personality of the displaced fire chief and the department as an institution was forgotten. As the personality conflict between the fire chief and the first selectman reached epic proportions, the department factionalized and became vulnerable.
If there is a silver lining, it is that the absorption of the members of the disbanded department into those departments whose turf had expanded has by all accounts gone pretty smoothly. A combination of good training records, a history of rubbing elbows, and a strong message from the displaced department’s leadership to its members that their transfer would not be considered disloyal-all joined to make an emotional situation manageable for the rank-and-file involved. If the department someday rises from its ashes, it most likely will be because this positive ongoing relationship provided the foundation for trust.
TOLLAND, CONNECTICUT
In Tolland, the economy was growing. A bucolic farming community was suddenly bursting at the seams, with a booming local economy built on light manufacturing and an evolving bedroom community. There was a volunteer nonprofit fire department and a separate volunteer ambulance organization.
Just as the local economy was flush with money, the number of volunteers began to taper off. The fire department and the ambulance organization looked at each other and said, “OK, let’s merge. United we stand, divided we fall.”
And strong they were-so strong that they got the town to provide them with three more fire stations, state-of-the-art equipment, supplemental disability insurance plans, and their own training center. They were so strong that they even got the town to hire some public works employees cross-trained as dogcatchers and firefighters. These employees were called public safety officers. And guess who got hired to be their supervisor? The volunteer fire chief.
Years went by. The town government changed. The town manager changed. The public safety officers joined a union of career firefighters but never successfully negotiated a contract. And one day, the volunteer fire chief decided to retire, not just as chief but also as public safety supervisor. The volunteer fire department elected a new chief. But there was a problem: He was one of the public safety officers-the one with the least seniority. On the basis of training certificates alone, he was certainly not the most qualified. From the perspective of the department’s board of directors, however, he was the candidate with the best people and management skills.
The town council decided that since the last volunteer fire chief was paid as the public safety supervisor, the town had a paid fire chief and, therefore, the town ought to get to pick the new fire chief.
Again, mutiny. But this time, it didn’t go to court. When the dust settled, the new volunteer fire chief was also the new public safety supervisor, and the town signed a contract with the volunteer fire department guaranteeing that the department wouldn’t be replaced, at least during the life of the contract, and that the fire department would have control over the public safety department. What’s more, the fire chief signed up for a Fire Officer III course at the state fire academy to, in effect, document his competency.
What saved Tolland was a well-established and well-coordinated public relations effort in which, over the years, the department had showcased its progressive stance on a variety of issues, including combination staffing. The department had a good relationship with the business community and a strong network of personal contacts. So when the department sent out a bulk mailing in support of its positions to every household and circulated petitions in a wide variety of public locations, its credibility had already been established. The town meeting that followed had to be moved to a school auditorium to accommodate the crowd that attended.
The Tolland case never went to court. Sure, the department hired a lawyer to determine its legal rights and, having done so, avoided the error of staking out extreme positions. But what really persuaded the politicians to back off, in addition to public pressure, was the fact that the department had a board of directors who were good at communicating and demonstrating the depth of their commitment to professionalism in the department.
STRATEGY FOR YOUR DEPARTMENT’S SURVIVAL
You never know when someone is going to come at you from left field. Why not preplan for when that might happen?
- Recognize warning signs that conflict is about to erupt. Are there personality conflicts “on the street” between neighboring departments? Is there fighting for fireground command? Are barriers, psychological or physical, popping up between career and volunteer units?
- Recognize conditions that make volunteer fire departments more vulnerable and exposed to outside attack. These include changing tax districts, changing forms of town government, changing demographics, changing workforces, changing responsibilities such as absorbing or adding EMS, and having the town buy a truck and letting you use it instead of buying it yourself with the town’s donation the way you used to. Even newspaper articles about poor response times in nearby big cities can create unrealistic expectations in your community, particularly when people begin to view emergency response as a right instead of a privilege.
- Good training records and training programs can shield a fire department from outside attack and have the public rise to its defense when attacked. Often, powerful people, including some politicians, are completely misinformed and don’t think of volunteers as professionals. Showing them spreadsheets evidencing levels of certification and experience-or, for that matter, the records themselves-can have a powerful effect in turning them into allies.
- Before conflict erupts, spend some time looking at the laws in your jurisdiction that govern establishment and organization of fire departments. It helps if you know going into an argument that your state has a statute or body of case law that protects volunteer fire departments from takeover attempts, prohibits cessation of dispatch because of a 911 surcharge on citizen phone bills, or establishes that there is nothing wrong with a private organization’s performing a public function independently of the structure of town government. In your state, does it make a difference who owns the land, the fire station, or the equipment or whether you’re chartered, incorporated, or just loosely associated?
- If you have to go to court, have your attorney consider extraordinary, equitable remedies that get the matter into court quickly and decisively if the law is on your side. But, always keep a back channel open, and always convey the message that you want a fair and equitable resolution of the dispute and that you believe it is really a simple misunderstanding. This allows the extremists on all sides to back down a little at appropriate times in the interest of an amicable resolution. When the dust settles, you all want to be able to work together.
- Strategies that usually fail in court are those that involve bluffing or changing your mind after cutting an interim settlement agreement. The court is usually looking for finality in terms of the day-to-day response arrangements. The court could care less if arguments over how much to pay for equipment or which faction is in control of the fire department drag on for years.
- Contracts between towns and volunteer departments are usually unwritten and social in nature, and they often are better left that way. When written contracts are involved, make sure you draft them carefully so that your department cannot be replaced other than through a procedure to which you had previously agreed. If there is a specific cycle of years involved with a certain window at thend of each cycle for either side to back away, make sure the window is sufficiently long enough for you to organize a public relations campaign for your survival in case the parting of ways is not by mutual agreement.
- In some states, OSHA has a program of voluntary inspections, sometimes broken up into separate categories such as paperwork, equipment, and fire stations. Participating in the program can be an inexpensive way of establishing the public perception that your department has nothing to hide and that your training meets or exceeds legal standards.
- Ongoing public relations are vital for survival. The more people know about your department and its accomplishments, the more they will be inclined to rise to your defense if and when you are attacked. When your public relations are based on facts that support the perception of professionalism, that’s even better.
- If a problem erupts, jump on it. Think of it as a blitz attack. The idea isn’t so much to be reactionary or accusatory to the other side. It is to deal with the problem by educating not only those with misperceptions but also the general public. If you are in a battle for your life, you want to win. Be ready for the big lie, the one that says that because you’re different, you’re no good. That’s not the issue. The issue is competency. Rye and pumpernickel may be different grains, but they both make good bread. Be in a position to comfortably defend your way of doing things based on the fact that your way is reasonable, meets the standards, and works.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
No volunteer fire department wants to be put out of business. No volunteer fire department wants to be on the receiving end of attacks on its competency, particularly public attacks. Mutual-aid departments-whether career or volunteer-that work with your department have a legitimate interest, along with the public, in ensuring that the volunteers they work with are competent and safe to be with. It helps to have a clear understanding of your legal position, but an established training program, good training records, and good public relations are your real tickets to survival.
ROBERTO (ROB) LUCHEME, ESQ., is an attorney, a line firefighter for the Glastonbury (CT) Fire Department, the training officer for the East Haddam (CT) Fire Department, and an instructor for Hartford County and the State of Connecticut. He is a certified fire instructor and fire officer and the recipient of the State of Connecticut Award for Professional Excellence.
