A $1.1 million local tax hike next year will fund an infusion of manpower and equipment into firefighting and emergency medical service in Vanderburgh County’s fastest-growing area.
The increase is the result of a new financial partnership between Scott and Armstrong townships and the town of Darmstadt. Creation of a new governmental unit – the Scott Township Fire Territory – allows the localities to impose a new uniform property tax rate for fire and EMS services provided by the “combination” paid/volunteer Scott Township Fire Department.
But it’s not credits and debits that animate Fire Chief Adam Farrar. The real imperative, Farrar said, is using the planned addition of six full-time firefighters to respond faster to calls for help. All three of the fire department’s stations will be manned 24/7. The township will buy another paramedic ambulance, too.
“We will get there quicker than we do now because we’ll have more manpower in different locations,” Farrar said.
They have to get there quicker.
Growth is a fact of life in northern Vanderburgh County, and it has been for years. City-county planning officials can produce a raft of statistics showing the largest local rates of population and housing growth for the past 25 years are north of Evansville city limits. For nearly three decades, the county has assiduously installed infrastructure – water and sewer lines, drainage improvements, flood plain management – in anticipation of major commercial and industrial development along a northern U.S. 41 corridor.
The new tax rate – 29.4 cents per $100 of assessed value – will first appear on residential, commercial and agricultural tax bills in Scott, Armstrong and Darmstadt next spring, replacing lower rates levied by the localities themselves. For property that isn’t already tax-capped, the rate is expected to cause residential property tax increases of $38, $65 and $76 per $100,000 of assessed value in Scott, Armstrong and Darmstadt respectively. Property, income and vehicle excise taxes will rise by a combined $1.1 million, according to H.J. Umbaugh & Associates, the localities’ Indianapolis-based financial advisory firm.
Accounting for the six new firefighters, the creation of a new equipment replacement fund and the costs of running all three fire stations continuously, the fire department’s budget will effectively double next year – from just over $1.1 million to more than $2.2 million.
“˜Trying to be proactive’
Northern Vanderburgh County’s growth is an old story by now, but it is also a new one. More is coming.
Jobs, available land and the perception of good schools have made the area a magnet. Some of the growth is compelled by lack of developable land elsewhere. But the area has other assets, like jobs at the Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant in Princeton and the desirability for workers of living nearby.
Scott Township’s projected growth over the next two decades is well-nigh explosive. The township, which comprises about three-quarters of the fire department’s coverage area, is expected to grow in population by 34 percent by 2035. The figure, contained in the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Area Plan Commission’s latest Comprehensive Plan, is the highest anywhere in the county – and nearly three times as high as the second-highest projected growth rate. That would be in Armstrong Township, also part of the fire department’s coverage area.
Fire and EMS service is big business in the area.
The Scott Township Fire Department covers 76 square miles – a larger swath of Vanderburgh County than any other local emergency response agency, including the city’s department. Scott Township’s department has more full-time firefighters than any agency not named the Evansville Fire Department. It is the only local fire department that uses its own paramedic ambulances.
Farrar said he and elected officials in his coverage area are “trying to be proactive” to brace for what’s coming. They’ve been trying since at least 2011, when they used a federal grant to add an initial wave of six new career staff positions.
By such methods township officials are forced to be creative to fund fire protection. They can’t compete with the resources available to the Evansville Fire Department, a full-time municipal agency with a $28 million budget. Just last month, the City Council approved spending $925,000 in riverboat money – a source unavailable to townships – for a large firetruck and a utility pickup for the EFD.
The Scott Township Fire Department’s need for more is illustrated, Farrar said, in a comparison that carries a warning. In 2006 the department made 538 emergency medical and fire runs. Central Dispatch data indicates it had already made 455 responses this year by June 30.
“˜Laying on the floor dying’
Local government leaders are calling the Scott Township Fire Territory a forward-thinking move to keep pace with the area’s growth.
“It’s going to bring us into the 21st Century as far as EMS and fire protection in northern Vanderburgh County,” said Steve Kahre, a Darmstadt Town Council member.
For Kahre, a lifelong Darmstadt resident, the Scott Township Fire Department is practically family. He was a volunteer firefighter in the department for six years in the late 1970s and early 80s. His first cousin, Keith Kahre, spent 36 years in the department, the last 12 of them as chief.
Guessing the department’s coverage area has twice as many residents as it did when he was fighting fires, Steve Kahre said the Scott Township Fire Territory had to happen. He said the benefits far outweigh the costs.
“If your husband or wife or kids are laying on the floor dying, would you like to have an ambulance four minutes away or have an ambulance 15 minutes away?” Kahre said. “For very few dollars, we’re getting a heck of a lot.”
The problem
It is perhaps a measure of northern Vanderburgh County’s growth that the fire department can have so much more treasure in men and equipment than any other suburban department – and Scott, Armstrong and Darmstadt agree it’s still not enough.
The Scott Township Fire Department has 13 “career” firefighters – seven paramedics and six EMTs – who staff two paramedic ambulances daily, with one in reserve. It supplements that force with about 30 volunteers who are certified firefighters, just like the paid personnel. About half of those are EMTs or paramedics.
The other local combination departments, German and McCutchanville, have two and four paid firefighters, respectively. The Perry Township Fire Department is all-volunteer.
Scott Township officials launched their own paramedic ambulance service in 1995, contending the fire department could transport emergency medical patients and fire victims to hospitals faster than Mercy Ambulance, the private company that had the contract to provide city-county service. Vanderburgh County and Evansville now contract with paramedic-level medical transportation company American Medical Response (AMR), which bought Mercy Ambulance.
But even with its own paramedic ambulance service, the Scott Township Fire Department confronts some of the same limitations faced by combination agencies everywhere. Response times are influenced by where callers live, how close that is to one of the department’s stations and whether full-time or volunteer emergency service personnel are available to respond.
There are still swaths of open land to cover – 76 square miles out of fire stations located on E. Baseline Road and in Darmstadt and Daylight. Slower response times are inevitable.
The Darmstadt station, located at 12949 Darmstadt Road, is closer to Armstrong Township residents – particularly those in easternmost Armstrong – than the department’s primary station on Baseline.
That’s a problem, because the Baseline station is the only one that’s manned 24/7. Two full-time career firefighters – one paramedic, one EMT – answer calls from the station daily. Two more work from the Daylight and Darmstadt stations, but only one of those stations is manned on any given day and then only for about 10 hours. The fire department rotates the coverage.
That means one or another of the outlying stations is unmanned every day. If it’s the Darmstadt station, what could have been a two- or three-minute response time from that station to an emergency there or in Armstrong Township’s center becomes 10 minutes.
The Daylight station, located at 12425 Green River Road on the easternmost reaches of Scott Township, poses the same problem in reverse. If an emergency call comes in near the well-known Hornet’s Nest tavern and the Baseline and Darmstadt stations are the only ones manned, a slower response results.
And if all four of the department’s daily contingent of paid firefighters are occupied on one end of the coverage area when an emergency call comes at the other end, Farrar must rely on mutual aid agreements with area fire departments and his own volunteers until paid personnel arrive on scene. If the call involves a fire, there’s no getting around the fact that OSHA regulations require paid and combination departments alike to have four firefighters on-scene before anyone can go inside.
There are few meaningful comparisons between the Scott Township Fire Department and the city’s department.
The Evansville Fire Department’s primary coverage area is much smaller – the city comprises almost 48 square miles – but it has 14 strategically located emergency response stations from which it answers about 10 times as many calls for help as the Scott Township Fire Department. Central Dispatch data indicates the EFD received 4,525 calls this year through June compared to Scott Township’s 455.
The Scott Township Fire Department’s 13 full-time firefighters are required to undergo the same state-mandated training and certification as those who work for the city agency. But the city has at least 66 on any given day, and 273 in all. Scott Township has 11 vehicles that meet the same federal guidelines as the city’s. It’s just that the city has more of them – 17 front-line vehicles with seven in reserve.
The solution
Residents of northern Vanderburgh County will know what’s coming long before the extra manpower arrives.
On July 1, 2017, with money from the spring property tax distribution, the fire department will throw six new full-time emergency responders – three firefighter-paramedics and three firefighter-EMTs – into the front lines.
The move will bring the department to 19 career firefighters, including Farrar – enough to assign the equivalent of six positions daily to the three fire stations without any one of the firefighters working more than 216 hours per month. All three stations will be manned at all times by one paramedic and one EMT. Fire response could begin with a force of six full-time firefighters even if no other career or volunteer personnel were available to help.
There’s something else, something shiny and new.
The township will spend about $200,000 to add a third staffed paramedic ambulance next year. The fire department will use its oldest ambulance as the backup.
“˜No guarantees’
With the beefed up workforce and extra wheels – and the attendant desire for quicker responses to fire and medical emergencies – may come expectations that the fire department’s performance data will prove it.
But that is not so easily deciphered.
There is no federal or state law mandating how fast all-volunteer, career or “combination” fire departments must respond to emergencies, a fact Ken Willette attributes to variables in population density and terrain in coverage areas everywhere.
While many volunteer and combination departments cover large swaths of open land in unincorporated areas, others work in more densely packed urban areas. Some rely more than others on volunteers who respond to emergencies from their homes – and sometimes those volunteers must first drive to the station to board firetrucks before heading to an emergency scene.
“It defies a one-size-fits-all approach,” said Willette, a firefighter for more than three decades and now a spokesman for the National Fire Protection Association.
Willette’s Boston-based nonprofit develops federal guidelines – recommendations, in essence – on fire department response times. The organization crafts codes and standards which are sometimes adopted by regulatory agencies.
The NFPA’s guidelines for volunteer and combination departments such as Scott Township’s reflect the difficulty of arriving at an easy answer about their response times. The guidelines include five types of coverage areas based on population density and recommended minimum staff, five recommended response times ranging from nine to 14 minutes and recommendations that those times be met at 80 or 90 percent rates.
Those guidelines may not have the force of law, but there is another force exerting pressure for fast response times by the Scott Township Fire Department – the agency’s contracts with the localities it covers. Scott Township and the town of Darmstadt require the fire department to respond to emergencies there within seven minutes 90 percent of the time.
But the statistics are muddled by caveats.
Farrar offers a number culled from his own department’s data – an “average response time” of 6 minutes and 38 seconds so far this year. But he cautions that the number, like the localities’ contract stipulations, measures only responses inside the fire department’s coverage area. Central Dispatch performance data includes responses made as part of mutual aid agreements with other departments, and those involve driving farther distances. The response times will be higher.
Moreover, Farrar’s average response time differs with the NFPA’s guidelines in a way that markedly affects the numbers. Farrar includes a 30 to 40-second “turnout time” for firefighters to secure gear and board trucks before they roll out of the station. The NFPA believes the clock should start ticking only when fire departments notify dispatchers they are leaving.
Average response times don’t account for those occasions when undermanned emergency responders are out of position answering another call. Even when all three stations are fully staffed, those times will come. There’s no room in an average for context.
Armstrong Township officials don’t place much stock in statistics of any kind – averages or percentages. Until now, Armstrong officials haven’t even bothered naming a desired response time, although Township Trustee Randy Kron said they are watching.
“What we were looking at was the longer response times to make sure it was in a reasonable time period,” Kron said.
Calling the fire department “excellent,” Kron said township officials are open to adopting Scott Township and Darmstadt’s seven-minute requirement when the Fire Territory begins operating on July 1. But Kron believes – and Kahre and Farrar agree – that the typical seven-minute response likely will shrink dramatically once the additional equipment and paid personnel are on board.
Kahre said Darmstadt town officials never seriously discussed altering their contract demands to include a shorter required response time.
“It boils down to, we’re going to do the best we can with what we’ve got,” he said. “There’s no guarantees in the emergency medical or fire service.”