Fincastle Volunteer Fire Department members sound off in letter
Here is a letter to the editor from the Fire chief and several members of the Fincastle Volunteer Fire Department received this morning Jan.. 22, 2013:
As officers of a key Volunteer Fire Departments (established 1947) in Botetourt County, we find it necessary to endeavor to inform the citizens of the county that the Botetourt County Administration has allowed an unbelievably abrasive and corrosive atmosphere to develop, in less than a year’s time, in the world of Botetourt County Emergency Services—fire and rescue. The situation, which has enormous cost implications, has been kept from the taxpayers, and, we believe, from a majority of the Board of Supervisors, for far too long.
We apologize for having waited so long, and we do so now with reluctance and heavy hearts. We have encountered evasion, denials, quibbling, and runarounds, followed by promises, with no evidence yet of any change in course, attitude, or policy: The Botetourt County Administration has allowed its Department of Emergency Services to embark on a course of action having the single goal of destroying Volunteer Emergency Services in the county.
In fact, one manager in the Botetourt County Administration, has preached loudly and repeatedly, often in public places, about his apparently looked-for goal: “…once our Volunteer friends are gone.”
The tipping-point has been reached during the current budget planning for Fiscal Year 2013-14. The County Administration has allowed its Department of Emergency Services to change budget preparation protocols and the format for monthly reports of expenditures in ways whose primary result will be to spread a cloak of concealment over the enormity of the ballooning total cost of the career-side of Botetourt County Emergency Services. The budget-planning manipulations bury significant cost areas of career-staff operations deep in the operating budgets of the volunteer organizations. Then, the changes in the format of the monthly spending reports continue the concealment by making discovery of the deception more difficult—even by the Board of Supervisors.
Botetourt’s longtime, loyal, volunteer leaders and members have been subjected to inappropriate, condescending, and insulting verbal abuse from Department of Emergency Services management. We have chosen to ignore, as best we can, the juvenile bullying of schoolyard snubbing in our own facilities and at fire scenes. Volunteer leaders who have dared attempt to question or (at least) to discuss any idea that originates at the Department of Emergency Services management level almost immediately suddenly find that their telephone calls are neither accepted nor returned. We cannot ignore that we are being treated as outsiders and intruders in our own buildings, and threatened with chessboard swap-games involving our own equipment.
Ten years or so ago, the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors wisely created the Fire and Rescue Steering Team (FARST) with a mission of needs-assessment, long-range planning, and assuring that the views of all involved parties were heard and addressed. It was amazingly successful. FARST helped create an atmosphere of understanding and cooperation that enabled Botetourt to navigate the creation of a combination career/volunteer operation without major turmoil or difficulties. Suddenly, FARST has disappeared. We don’t know if it’s dead, or missing, or just being held prisoner.
Individual members of the Board of Supervisors have told us that Botetourt County cannot afford to alienate its Volunteers. “The money for an all-career operation just IS NOT THERE,” they say. If that is the case, just what is going on here?
All indications are that, indeed, the money just is not there. If the essentiality of the Volunteers continues, that needs to be said. Again. Loud and clear, and as an official statement. Maybe it will be heard, even in the offices of the Botetourt County Administration.
FINCASTLE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT
Henry Booze
Chief
Preston Bryant
Assistant Chief
Melvin Burrell
Lieutenant
David Moran
Board of Directors Member and
Immediate Past Chief
January 22, 2013 - 11:00 AM
Way to go FVFD, thank you for speaking up. I was on the FVRS for several years. Some of the people hired by the county as administrators were hard to work with even when they were running as volunteers.
…and they also claim to not have money to fund a new school in Blue Ridge. The Botetourt government should be ashamed and embarrassed at how they have run themselves for the past 5 or so years.
Colonial has a wonderful staff but the structure around them is falling apart and inadequate for the LARGEST SCHOOL POPULATION IN BOTETOURT!!! Kids are being taught in closets.
But ask them about their $2.4 million Parks and Rec Budget Plan.
This is spot on! The problem with our current system is not the paid line staff it is the management. We hired management that was to young, to inexperienced and dead set on building an emergency services empire of paid staff. Don’t get me wrong we need paid staff on the ambulances in the county and ironically that is how this all started. What we don’t need is paid full time firefighters. Cross training is good, in order to supplement, and an argument can be made for help during the day. But, we do not need paid firefighters at night, by the way this started last month, or on the weekends. We are only a County of 34,000 to 100,000 like Roanoke County or Roanoke City.
The current management inflates call statistics by stacking them in their favor. They make tough call standards for the volunteers, while they self dispatch their own paid units on just about every call in the county. We have paid firefighters running hundred thousand dollar trucks across the county on calls that do not warrant their response. Instead of allowing volunteers to respond and assess the situation Botetourt Emergency Service supervisors often insert themselves, via the radio, into calls that are better served by the local companies that were originally dispatched. Furthermore, the paid units constantly self dispatch themselves to calls without the request for assistance from the volunteer companies. We have written protocols for dispatching in place and the paid staff needs to follow those procedures. That being said management should not be allowed to re-write those protocols/ procedures to favor their cause.
The citizens of this County are being told that they need these paid services and it’s just not true. This is costing the tax payers millions of unnecessary tax dollars. The volunteers of Botetourt have been and are capable of meeting the fire service needs of this County. Maybe years from now they will not, but now they can. What is ruining the system is management at Botetourt Emergency Services and there toxic handling of the volunteers system. Frankly, they are the ones that are causing the volunteers to leave.
Being a taxpaying citizen in Buchanan, I would like to give county administrators kudos for stepping in and correcting major issues culminating here. Our fire department was truly in a state of ruin, financially & morally. We need people doing civic jobs who have been schooled & certified. I don’t mind working hard & paying taxes when I know the money is well spent. Thank you & God Bless!
The issue is not the need for emergency service or the Fire Departments, it’s not the dedicated personnel volunteers or career. The issue is county government’s oversight of emergency service. Our previous county administrator said there was an overwhelming support among the departments for a county ES Director. That was not true as several departments a year ago in public statements questioned the need using terms as “redundant” and “top heavy”. The Buchanan Volunteer Fire Department dissolves and control was shited to the county and /or town including the departments debt. Was this action to operate and assume the debt of Buchanan Department approved by the Board of Supervisors? If not who had the authority to institute this action? Now we have serious allegations from the Fincastle Volunteer Department directed toward county adminstration. The issue is county government acting indifferent to communities, dictating policy and actions without consensus and now allegedly attempting to conceal or hide the actual cost.
Fire fighters are what our tax dollars should be spent on. I good knowing that my smaller paycheck is going towards a service vital for any community.
Paul you are correct, when it is warranted we need to hire paid personnel. But let’s not just throw money at a problem that does not exist. In time we will need more paid folks, but that time is not now and shame on the county administration for trying to hide the costs in the volunteers budget. You want to save money take the fund raising burden off the backs of the volunteers and let us run calls. Stop with the over burdensom protocols and policies. Support the volunteers don’t bad mouth them, especially in public. By the if the county is truly about a joint paid/volunteer sytem then that employee needs to find work elswhere.
The current paid ES staff cost about $2 million in wages & benefits. To the taxpayers $2 million in revenue means $.07 per hundred in property tax. If the volunteer departments collapse, it will cost millions to replace them. Property taxes generate 70% of all local revenue. If we want paid fire departments, our checks to the county each December must increase and increase significantly.