Enfield
Several proposals are on the table to attract people to either the ambulance service or the town’s Fire Department, officials say, from recruiting new members on social media to hiring full-time professionals.
There’s even talk of merging the two municipal departments under one roof and having members trained to fight fires and respond to medical calls.
“Enfield, like probably just about every other smallish town in New Hampshire and New England, is confronting challenges with volunteers,” Town Manager Ryan Aylesworth said in an interview last week.
But those challenges became particularly evident recently, as department heads prepared long-term plans for Enfield’s strategic governance process, which encouraged officials to examine problems and set goals for municipal departments.
Almost every function of town government was scrutinized between April and September, as officials met to discuss their departments’ futures.
As department heads attempt to plan, it often can be difficult for them to look past the annual budget process and the demand to keep costs tight, Aylesworth said. So, they attempted to write plans that reflected their hopes for municipal services and detailed how to make those goals a reality.
The Enfield Fire Department boasts 29 volunteer members and received a total of 154 calls last year.
But only 10 of those members responded to at least 15 of the calls, according to the department’s strategic plan.
Another six firefighters didn’t respond to any calls, the plan said.
The ambulance service is facing similar issues, Ambulance Chief Richar d Martin said on Monday.
“When I started 14 years ago, we had a lot of retired people and now it’s younger people with families, and they have to try to balance their time,” he said.
Getting to every emergency is difficult, even for members who live in town, Martin said. He said he owns an auto body shop on Route 4, but still finds it tough to drop what he’s working on to respond to calls.
“Everyone does a good job and does what they can do,” he said. “It’s just getting tougher with the volunteerism.”
To help combat those struggles, Aylesworth said he’s looking into several options that were floated in the planning process, including a potential merger of the two groups.
While the ambulance service is governed by the town manager and Selectboard, the fire department operates under a different structure, which allows elected fire wards to manage operations alongside an appointed chief.
Doing away with the fire wards structure would break with tradition, but it might help to cope with staffing problems and bring members under closer supervision, according to the fire department’s strategic plan.
Martin said he also could see the town someday switching to full-time firefighters and paramedics, which would help wean the town off of its reliance on volunteers.
“I think eventually, that’s what will probably happen,” he said. “I could see that coming in the future.”
Challenges at the fire department and ambulance service aren’t all the strategic governance process looked at.
For example, the Enfield Police Department hopes to reduce motor vehicle crashes caused by speed, distracted driving and impaired driving by 5 percent annually.
The department also set goals of reducing property and personal crime by 10 percent every year, and building better community relations.
The department plans to meet those goals by increasing officer training hours, patrols and community programs, and dedicating more time for investigations, according to its plan.
Meanwhile, the library hopes to increase programming and its collection, but its plan calls for the creation of a friends group that can help raise money for a new library building.
The strategic planning process also has led to additional studies, including an ongoing effort to study Enfield’s town-owned buildings, Aylesworth said.
“Our municipal buildings and facilities really need a lot of attention,” he said, adding that many are more than a century old and origoinally were intended for other purposes.
For example, the Union Street Fire Station originally was a creamery, and the ambulance building was Enfield Village’s train depot before it began housing oil and propane vehicles.
Aylesworth said the study will help officials determine which buildings should be renovated and whether the town should consider building new ones. Results are expected to be presented later this month.
The town also is looking at its infrastructure, particularly its water and sewer systems.
Enfield hopes to further study whether it’s feasible to build its own wastewater treatment facility, which would allow it to break off of Lebanon’s system and the city’s annual sewer rate increases. The town also plans to look at its nearly century-old pipes and how to begin budgeting for work to replace them.
“If you’re going to be making significant upgrades to your infrastructure in the future, you really need to start planning financially as soon as possible,” Aylesworth said. “We’re trying to be a little bit more proactive so that we’re not waiting for a cataclysmic event in the system and then trying to figure out where the money is coming from.”
Copies of each department’s strategic governance plan can be found online at www.enfield.nh.us/strategic-governance-enfield. Aylesworth said comments about the proposals and goals will be used to help build the town’s capital improvements program and next year’s Master Plan update.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.
Correction
Enfield’s department heads engaged in the town’s strategic planning process were instructed to develop plans that reflected their desired level of service, but officials also estimated the costs of those services. An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the town’s strategic governance process.