Those questions, in turn, ended up Tuesday before the Reno County Commission.
An initial discussion decided nothing – except a determination that coverage legally can’t change for at least a year because of the timing of the request. That’s because any change in fire district boundaries requires legal notices, which can’t be accomplished before fire district budgets must be set in July.
At issue is a unique convergence of fire district boundaries in the Pleasantview area, a primarily commercial development about 8 miles southwest of Hutchinson.
Four different fire districts divide the three-block area, which boasts 17 merchants.
Rural Fire District No. 8 has a fire station within a half mile of the development’s core, but it is not the designated responder for the majority of the neighborhood.
In fact, the location where the accident occurred was within the boundaries of Fire District 2, requiring a response from Hutchinson, which officials said took about 10 minutes. If the accident had happened on the other side of the highway, a different fire unit would have responded.
“I’m one of three businesses in Pleasantview that fall in District 4,” said Keith Nisly, owner of Fairview Service, who brought the issue to the attention of County Administrator Gary Meagher. “The others are Dutch Kitchen and Stutzmans Greenhouse. Half of Stutzmans is actually in a different fire district because its commercial greenhouses are across the road.”
There is an agreement between fire districts 3 and 8 for shared response for about 6-square miles north of Morgan Avenue, between Dean and Partridge roads. Created in 1989, it allows Fire District 8 to respond until a Fire District 3 unit, coming out of Nickerson, can arrive. But upon its arrival, District 3 takes over the response scene and District 8 is supposed to bill the other district for responding.
District 8, O’Sullivan noted, hasn’t been billing District 3 – $100 a run plus other expenses – as it is supposed to.
There are also mutual aid agreements between all the departments, allowing each district to call for assistance from the others.
Those agreements, however, emphasized County Counselor Joe O’Sullivan, do not legally allow Fire District 4, for example, responding out of Partridge, to ask Fire District 8 to send its unit because its closer – even though, according to E911 Director Michelle Abbott, that’s what they are training fire commanders to do.
“Mutual aid is not a matter of who can get there first,” O’Sullivan said. “If you need additional help because it’s going to take five minutes longer to get there, it can’t be justified unless you’re willing to pay for that… You’re supposed to make that (mutual aid) call on-site because you need help. If it’s a big prairie fire and you know you’ll need help, you can call sooner. But if the responding chief is always five minutes further away, there’s going to be a problem with that because it’s pretty close to automatic.”
Residents can petition to be detached from one fire district and then petition to join another, Meagher said. However, even that creates issues because it changes the taxing districts contributing to an operation, and “everyone wants to be in the district with the closest station.”
There has to be 10 percent of residents or businesses in an area petition for the change. They must publish a legal notice twice of the petition, giving opponents 90 days to respond. A protest petition to stop the change must then contain signatures of at least 19 percent of taxpayers in the district. Even then, it is to the commission whether to proceed or not, Meagher said.
One other option, O’Sullivan noted, is consolidation of all the county’s fire districts into one. Then it wouldn’t matter who responded, because taxpayers from throughout the county would support all operations. That, however, may be politically difficult to do. Most rural fire districts have a mill levy capped at 5 mills for fire protection, while District 2, in the city, is collecting 21 mills.
“I represent the Pleasantview merchants,” Nisly said after the meeting. “We’re just after some common sense. We’d like to see a little better response times.”
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