Plainfield
Town Administrator Steve Halleran said he is on board with the idea, as is Plainfield Selectman Rob Taylor, who previously served as a member of the Meriden department and whose brother Bill has been with the department for 34 years and now is deputy chief.
“I think we very much support doing what we need to do for the benefit of the town and for the operation of the departments,” Rob Taylor said.
The idea of a merger popped up two to three years ago, and was prompted by insurance discussions.
Because they technically aren’t part of a municipal government, the volunteer departments are having difficulty obtaining affordable liability and workers’ compensation insurance, Taylor explained.
“It got the firefighters thinking: what is the best way to have this set up, and the best way to give the best protections to firefighters,” Taylor said.
The Plainfield department also was concerned that its firetrucks were not considered municipal vehicles for the purposes of insurance and registration, he added.
Taylor said the volunteer departments have saved the towns lots of money over the years and the new requirements are what he calls “growing pains.”
“It’s also semantic,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, they are our municipal fire department. We have to make it official.”
Frank Currier, the joint fire chief for Meriden and Plainfield, said talks of merging into a municipal department are still “very, very preliminary” — so preliminary, in fact, that creating a sole municipal force could take years. There also is a chance that it never happens, he added.
“It is all in the discussion stages,” Currier said. “A lot of legal work has to be figured out.”
If the departments were to merge, “things would not be a lot different as far as … services go,” Currier said.
Response times to calls and the ability to provide adequate coverage to the town would remain unchanged, the fire chief said.
“It is basically just a structural thing,” he said.
Under the current structure, the town gives each fire department a certain amount of money to respond to fire and safety calls. In calendar year 2016, the town allocated $55,000 to the Plainfield Volunteer Fire Department and $44,000 to the Meriden Volunteer Fire Department, according to the proposed 2017 budget.
Both of the departments raise funds to supplement their expenses, something Currier said likely wouldn’t change if Meriden and Plainfield were to merge.
The firefighters would remain volunteer and would operate out of the existing Meriden and Plainfield fire stations.
As it stands, each department owns its own equipment, including the firetrucks and fire stations.
If the departments merged and became one municipal agency, they would need to deed to the town all of their equipment, including the trucks and stations, which the town would then retain ownership of, said Halleran, the Plainfield administrator.
With that ownership would come additional long-term costs, Halleran said.
Instead of the fire departments paying to maintain equipment, for example, the town would be saddled with that expense.
Halleran said he hasn’t crunched numbers, so he isn’t sure how much more money the town would have to spend to have its own fire department.
“In the short term, the money will be about the same,” he said.
Taylor said there are some concerns about the proposal, including whether takeover by the town would complicate a $328,000 grant the Meriden volunteer department has been awarded through a Federal Emergency Management Agency program to purchase a new fire engine, replacing one that dates back to the 1980s.
He said some firefighters also are concerned about possible micromanaging from the Selectboard if the town has formal oversight.
A draft warrant article listed on the town’s website indicates the department would be called the Plainfield Fire Department and would be formed out the assets and liabilities of the two existing departments.
It is unclear if the draft article will make it onto the 2017 Town Meeting warrant.
Town residents must approve any such article for the merger to take place, and the transition itself would not take place for another year after passage, per state law.
The issue is on the Plainfield Selectboard’s agenda for its meeting on Wednesday and Taylor said he and his colleagues may decide then whether it should go on the Town Meeting warrant.
The proposed changes to the fire department come after Plainfield recently merged oversight of once-independent libraries in Meriden and Plainfield Village.
Taylor said improvements over the years, including the paving of Stage Road, which connects the two villages, have helped lead to the recognition that they are no longer separate communities.
“It was a long way between communities if you were going to get stuck in the mud,” he said. “It’s … 2017, times have changed, and we can get across town in a matter of minutes. Hopefully, we’re all pulling on the same rope.”
Staff writer John P. Gregg contributed to this report. Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.