First Things First - A Successful Fire Levy

The fire levy passed. That's good news. It puts to rest the uncertainty on the direction of the department and the level of service. The trustees have a clear plan, as put forth by the Fire Chief's levy proposal, on additions to our staff, construction of new buildings and new equipment and apparatus purchases.

We are moving forward on implementing those plans, which include:

1. Building three new fire stations to replace stations 1, 2 and 3. Geographically they will be in the same location, but we are reviewing potential site locations in order to increase safety and response times.
2. Remodeling station 4 to accommodate the department headquarters including training facilities.
3. Increase shift staffing to 55 firefighters which is the desired staffing level needed (according to Chief Welsh) to staff 14 firefighters on duty at all times.
4. Add a new day shift which will provide 2 additional full-time firefighters from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday thru Friday. Peak usage of our fire and EMS services tends to be during the weekday, thus these two firefighters will help to meet peek demands on our fire department as well as minimize overtime due to training.
5. Enhance our part paid/volunteer program. Volunteer firefighters have been a vital part of the Sylvania Township Fire Department for 35+ years, but in the last few years the program has waned. The program as Chief Welsh has outlined will do two things. First, it will provide for volunteers to be scheduled to work evening and weekend shifts to supplement our full-time crew. Second, it will provide a larger pool of people to respond in the occasional instances of large and involved fire or emergency medical incident.

I supported the chief's proposal because it introduced into our department an economically sustainable staffing structure that will help to keep our excellent level of first responder services at a price our community can afford to pay.

To be clear, the levy that was approved will not begin to be collected until February 2009. Given that, and a very tight 2008 budget, we are limited on how quickly we can implement the entire levy proposal. But we are certainly moving in that direction and look forward to successfully fulfilling the promises of the levy in 2009.