WEATHERSFIELD — The defeat at Town Meeting of a proposal to create a single municipal fire department with a full-time chief in place of the two, volunteer departments has not ended the effort to make changes in the town’s fire services.
But what those changes will look like and how long it will take to implement them is still to be determined.
“One thing we are all in agreement with is that change needs to happen,” Selectboard Chairwoman Kelly Murphy said Monday. “How we will get there and what that will look like we have to work through.”
Murphy said she is asking the board for ideas on what they should address moving forward and will use those as the basis for the discussion.
But before those discussions get serious, the board has to come up with plan to fund fire services in the new fiscal year that begins on July 1.
When the Selectboard voted to create a municipal department and later to place an appropriation of $265,000 for a town-run fire department, it did not include any money in next year’s operating budget for fire services. Consequently when voters defeated the article, 397-316, on March 5, it left the town without fire service funding.
Town Manager Ed Morris said it appears the likely approach to rectify the problem will be a special Town Meeting.
“We talked about it some at our last meeting (March 18) and will again discuss it on April 1,” Morris said.
In the current year, the tax-supported amount for fire service for the two volunteer departments was $171,000, Morris said.
Additional funding was provided by the departments.
The $265,000 appropriation would have increased the amount to be raised by taxes by $65,000 to $245,000 in the new fiscal year.
Whether that was a contributing factor or the main reason for the defeat on Town Meeting Day is not clear. Neither Morris nor Murphy said they heard any one reason.
“There does not seem to be one definitive reason,” Morris said.
According to the minutes from the board’s March 18 meeting a “lack of information, misinformation, resentment that the municipal department had been created by the board and not by town vote; and a lack of agreement between all three parties,” were mentioned as likely reasons for the no vote.
As to how to move forward to fund fire services, the board said it needed to decide on a course of action by May 1. Some of what was discussed included presenting the same article and repealing the board’s decision to create a municipal department.
The board also discussed the fire commission, created in 1990 with the goal of quelling some of the discord between the two volunteer departments.
One suggestion from board member John Arrison was to for a committee with three rank and file members of the fire departments “who have some sense of common ground in place of the commission,” the minutes state.
The commission, which was suspended in the lead up to municipal fire department vote, has never operated as intended and has a difficult time getting and keeping members. One suggestion at the March 18 meeting was for it to be abolished, which would require voter approval since voters created the commission.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
