Fla. Chief Says Refusal to Respond Could Happen Again

DeFUNIAK SPRINGS — Liberty Volunteer Fire District Assistant Chief Tony Roy isn’t apologizing for ordering a tanker truck to not respond to a Walton County Fire Rescue call for assistance fighting a house fire.

The county should have anticipated the reaction, Roy said, and unless it decides to start sending some money Liberty’s way, can expect more of the same in the future.

“We’ve kept putting them on notice that you’re going to have to help us or we’re not going to be able to respond any more to county calls,” Roy said.

At 3:30 p.m. Nov. 25, Walton County Fire Res-cue requested that Liberty dispatch a truck to a house fire at 169 Lorenz Drive near DeFuniak Springs.

A dispatcher relayed the message to the inde-pendent fire district a minute later and Roy responded by saying “you’ll need to bypass Liberty due to funding considerations of the county.”

A fire call sheet indicates crews had arrived 10 minutes ahead of the call going out, but Roy maintains that Walton County had been on the scene 45 minutes before deciding to call Liberty for help.

By that time, he said, the home on Lorenz Drive was a lost cause.

“They should have called for that truck as soon as they got on scene,” he said.

Liberty and the Argyle Fire District, both volunteer departments, are the two remaining independent fire districts operating inside Walton County. As such, they have taxing authority within the jurisdiction for which they provide fire protection.

Walton County funds Walton County Fire Rescue and, in 2014, ended a years’ old practice of providing stipends to the Liberty and Argyle districts as well as to the municipal fire districts of DeFuniak Springs and Freeport.

“It had grown to the point where there was a lot of money going out,” said Walton Fire Chief Bobby Martin.

In FY 2014, the county gave $94,804 to Liberty, according to numbers provided by the county. The district received another $53,725 in assessment fees it charged to district residents.

When the county stopped sending money to Liberty, the fire district’s board of commissioners, of which Roy is a member, convinced residents to vote in favor of increased assessment fees.

The fees went up from $25 to $75 per household, and district revenue grew from $148,529 in FY 14 to $163,017 in FY 15.

Also in reaction to the county’s decision to end the stipend, the board – largely intact since the district was established in 2003 – decided to end its mutual aid agreement with Walton County Fire Rescue.

Under a mutual aid agreement fire departments agree to help one another in time of need. Mutual aid can be either automatic or as requested.

- A memorandum outlining Liberty’s stance was sent out in November 2014 to Walton County Emergency Management and the Walton County Sheriff’s Office Communications, which dispatches emergency vehicles.

“We didn’t want to do it, but we were forced to,” Roy said.

The memo states:

“Liberty Fire District should NOT be dispatched to calls primarily serviced by Walton County Fire Rescue. Based on Walton County Commissioners funding decisions, we can no longer financially support these areas for mutual aid services.”

The memo called for Liberty to maintain mutual aid agreements with Argyle and DeFuniak Springs, “our closest neighbors.”

Roy said the county’s decision to cut Liberty’s stipend off, yet continue to spend general fund dollars on county firefighting, amounts to double taxation for Liberty Fire District residents.

“We all pay ad valorem taxes … Roughly $10 million in ad valorem taxes go to fire rescue,” Roy said.

“Why can’t they reserve money from the general fund to supplement fire services?” he asked. “We’re not receiving any of that. It’s not proportional. It’s double taxation.”

Liberty provides fire coverage for 89 square miles of rural area with 14 “pieces of apparatus,” Roy said. It has one tanker that is 33 years old and another that is 15 years old.

“We’re basically operating on $75,000 per station and trying to put 10 percent of our budget into the bank for new capital expenditures,” Roy said. “We can do that, manage that, based on our district and our closest neighbors. We can’t do that running all over the county.”

Martin said it was Liberty Fire District firefighters who first made public Roy’s Nov. 25 decision to reject the call for help from the county. He said those firefighters asked him to do something to re-establish mutual aid ties.

His county-sanctioned efforts to make peace, however, fell on deaf ears at a Liberty Fire District Board meeting, Martin said. Commissioners asked a lot of questions and raised some issues, but didn’t act on the mutual aid proposal.

Liberty’s concerns were “money driven,” Martin said. “They want the county to renew the stipend or some portion of the stipend.”

The county’s stance is that mutual aid is not a financial transaction.

“That’s the purpose of an agreement. If you have an agreement you have an agreement,” Martin said.

Roy said the issue of re-establishing a mutual aid agreement with Walton County comes up at Liberty Fire District board meetings every few months, and the board has remained unanimously opposed to doing so.

Liberty Fire Chief John Dunham has the authority to decide whether or not to send trucks into the county and both the Liberty Fire District and Walton County Fire Rescue say they’d never withhold aid if lives were at stake.

Martin adds that the county fire department stands ready at any time to assist Liberty.

“If Liberty calls we’re going. We’ve never refused to go to them at anytime,” he said. “If they want us, we’ll respond. It’s up to them whether they’ll allow us into the district.”

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