The year 2007 was a year of change for fire and rescue departments throughout Leelanau County and 2008 could be a year of even bigger change.

One of the 10 “goals and objectives” established by the Leelanau County Board of Commissioner for 2007 called on the county to “facilitate discussion of county-wide emergency services, fire and rescue efforts.”

At number seven on the list, the objective was achieved on Nov. 29, 2007 when the county hosted the first in what may become a series of discussions among township, village, tribal and county officials focused on improving fire and rescue services in the county. A follow-on discussion is expected to be scheduled sometime next month.

The county board’s goal to facilitate those discussions moved from number seven on 2007’s list to number five on the list for 2008.

Not coincidentally, the county board decided at its annual organizational meeting Tuesday morning that its number one “goal and objective” for 2008 would be to identify a new mechanism to fund the county’s 9-1-1 Emergency Dispatch Center. Currently, the center’s operations are being funded through an extra tax levy that county voters approved in November 2006 that will expire at the end of this year.

The tax levy was added in part because of delays in passage of a state law reauthorizing a telephone landline surcharge that previously paid for 9-1-1 center operations. New legislation authorizing a new surcharge that may include cellular telephones and Internet voice-over protocols was recently signed into law and may replace the millage next year.

Meanwhile, local emergency services experts plan to hold a series of meetings this year to discuss trends that have affected fire and rescue departments in recent years. The discussions may lead to increased cooperation among fire and rescue departments in the county as well as the local units of government that fund them.

Tom Skowronski is head of the county’s Emergency Management department and 9-1-1 Dispatch Center. He and members of his staff are compiling statistics that will form a basis for discussion among fire chiefs and other officials at the next fire and rescue “summit” meeting.

“The biggest trend we’re seeing is increased call volume,” Skowronski said. “Everybody is responding to more calls than ever these days, and that’s not necessarily because of a higher population as much as it is the public’s expectation that services will be available, especially as the population ages and more ambulance runs are required.”

Skowronski also pointed out that fire and rescue departments in Leelanau County and throughout the state and nation are having a hard time finding and retaining qualified volunteer firefigthers and emergency medical personnel.

“There is just so much training these people are required to have under the law,” Skowronski said. “Locally, a number of steps have been taken to mitigate the situation by providing more local training, but we need to do more,” he said.

In addition, the cost of increasingly sophisticated firefighting and emergency medical equipment has been going up, and all departments are facing tight budgets, Skowronski said.

The president of the Suttons Bay-Bingham Fire and Rescue Authority, Suttons Bay Township supervisor Rich Bahle, said he was encouraged that the county is moving forward to facilitate additional discussions and increased collaboration among the county’s fire and rescue departments.

Suttons Bay-Bingham currently has a contract to provide 24/7 Advanced Life Support (ALS)ambulance service to Leelanau Township to its north. However, Suttons Bay-Bingham has had a harder time negotiating contracts with Leland Township to its west. Leland currently contracts with Northflight Emergency Services out of Traverse City for ALS.

Bahle pointed out, however, that Suttons Bay-Bingham has an agreement with Northflight that calls on Suttons Bay-Bingham to back up Northflight if they can’t make it to Leland.
“The expectation is that everybody in Leelanau County will have access to 24/7 Advanced Life Support ambulanc eservice,” said Bahle. “But the disconnect has been where the service is actually coming from, where the capability was created, and whose taxpayers are actually paying to maintain it.”

That disconnect is precisely what caused the Glen Arbor Fire and Rescue Department – a fully-funded 24/7 ALS operation – to break ranks late last year with the Solon-Centerville (Cedar) Fire and Rescue Department, which operates under the tightest budget in the county. Although mutual aid agreements remain in force, Glen Arbor has scaled back its support for Cedar on a routine basis because of the funding disparity.

Albin Rosinski, the Solon-Centerville chief, said the thinks “the fire chiefs have done a pretty good job putting this together over the years,” but that information he has seen in the press is “tearing us apart.” Rosinski said that mutual aid agreements among county departments have served the county community well and that recent developments have created animosity among the departments.

Glen Arbor Fire and Rescue Chief John Dodson said that the major trends he’s seeing in the emergency services area includes an increased need for professionalism among volunteer (part-paid) and fulltime emergency services personnel.

“Actually, there have not been very many new requirements for training and new equipment imposed on departments in the last six years or so,” Dodson said. He said he believes, however, that some departments are just now coming to grips with the need to improve their capabilities with better training, better equipment and the hiring of more fulltime personnel.

“Twenty-four/seven ALS should be readily available to everyone,” Dodson said, “and increasingly that is what the public expects.”

But, Dodson added, the appropriate geographical location of fire and rescue capabilities in the county – as well as a more equitable means of funding those capabilities – will be among the challenges Leelanau County will face in 2008.