BY LUCIE KRISMAN
The Douglas County Commission approved a resolution Wednesday setting up the potential for a merger among the Eudora, Clinton, Kanwaka and Wakarusa township fire departments.
This merger will consolidate the four fire departments into one fire district called Fire District No. 6. Consolidation of the departments is slated to finish by June 24.
During a work session, Wakarusa Township Fire Chief Mike Baxter presented county commissioners with reasons why the four fire departments wish to consolidate.
Baxter said the fire chiefs have been discussing this idea since November.
“This is not a new subject for Douglas County,” Baxter said. “We’ve asked the county commissioners for support in this, and they’ve been graciously willing to support this so far.”
Among the reasons for this change are enhancing safety, rising costs for equipment, challenges in recruiting volunteers and enhancing coordination among departments.
Baxter said this unification of departments will make it easier to recruit volunteer firefighters by combining those districts to provide a bigger pool of possible volunteers and that this change could also result in room for a full-time position at the station to cover weekday needs in addition to volunteers.
“The people that are living in the rural areas are aging, or they have families and commitments and they just can’t volunteer,” Baxter said. “We’re fighting for these volunteers and this puts them in that same pool that we would just share as this one agency.
Baxter said although they do not currently call themselves a unified district, the four districts already work together often.
“We all pool our resources together,” Baxter said. “It takes multiple agencies and volunteers. We just haven’t done it standardized, and it’s hard to do it that way with the current system in place.”
Clinton Township Fire Chief Dennis Snodgrass said the fire chiefs from each district found their departments shared deficiencies in common and could benefit from working together when they trained together and discussed this idea.
County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said the county is enthusiastic to assist the townships in adopting this change.
“We want to be good partners with townships in how this goes and understand that taxpayers already paid for these resources and townships,” Plinsky said. “I want to see it continue, so I’m excited to have this opportunity to really do something that I think will really help move this county to a safer and more innovative response-oriented area.”
County Commissioner Michelle Derusseau said although the list of challenges facing the four fire departments was extensive, the biggest benefit from this consolidation comes down to safety.
“We’re looking into the safety of not only our community members but the volunteers out there protecting people and property,” Derusseau said.
Following the approval at this meeting, a public hearing on the resolution will be April 8. The Board of County Commissioners will complete final actions for adopting the resolution at its June 24 meeting.
Reach reporter Lucie Krisman at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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