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Oak Grove fire department considering levy, paid EMTs

Photo by Michael Kelly Oak Grove Volunteer Fire Department chief Jim Mason checks engine compartment fluids in the squad's ambulance Tuesday. The department will hold a meeting for township residents Monday night to discuss a proposal to hire paid EMTs for daytime weekday ambulance service because of the difficulty in recruiting volunteers.

The Oak Grove Volunteer Fire Department is the most recent among Washington County volunteer departments to consider using paid Emergency Medical Technicians to staff its ambulance service.

Squad chief Misty Mason said Monday that it has become increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers for the dayshift Monday-through-Friday service.

“It just seems that right now we don’t have a lot of people who can volunteer during the day time,” she said. “So many are two-income families, and it’s hard to commit to making squad calls during the day. People just can’t volunteer like they used to.”

The department, she said, is looking at hiring two people to work 12-hour shifts Monday through Friday. Jim Mason, her husband and the department fire chief, said hours likely would be 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Misty Mason said a shortage of volunteers means the department is missing an increasing number of runs.

“We have to call for mutual aid, and if Lowell-Adams and Warren don’t have people we have to call Marietta, and that means they’re going outside the city,” she said. “We’re just trying to do what’s best for the community. We have a lot of older people, and when they need a squad, its hard to get the attention they need.”

The expense would fall to West Muskingum Township, and the plan would require passage of a property tax levy. Muskingum Township Trustee Ken Schilling is working out the details with Washington County auditor Matthew Livengood, who is expected to attend an informational meeting Monday night for township residents.

Both Jim and Misty Mason work as paid staff for the Devola VFD, and Schilling said Tuesday they had come to the township trustees with a plan using Devola’s system as a model. Devola is in East Muskingum Township.

“Devola has a paid crew 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Jim Mason said, wouldn’t it be great if we had that level of service in West Muskingum,” Schilling said. “We’ll have a public meeting Monday night, they’ll cover all the bases for a typical turnout for daytime runs, cover the nuts and bolts, and have the auditor come in and talk about the financial ramifications, the mills relative to the tax base, and calculate that per $100,000 of taxable value.”

The meeting will be at 7 p.m. at the Oak Grove Fire Department.

Schilling said that if the township residents respond positively to the proposal, the fire department can ask the trustees for a resolution to get an official estimate from the auditor, followed by a resolution to put a levy question on the ballot of the March 2020 election. The deadline for that, he said, is Dec. 18.

“We want to support their efforts, we’re very proud of our volunteer fire departments, those guys have a lot of personal pride and community pride in the fire department, but it becomes a concern with the declining number of volunteers,” Schilling said. “They want to step up and maintain that high level of integrity. They have an idea to offer to the community, and we’ll see what the input is.”

Misty Mason said Oak Grove is just the latest volunteer department to consider paid staff – Reno and Devola have had that for several years, she said, Beverly just began recently, and Newport and Belpre townships also have paid staff.

The trend is a national one, said the coordinator of volunteers for the Ohio Association of Fire Chiefs.

Chief Colin Altman of Miami Township Fire/Rescue near Yellow Springs, said many factors seem to have contributed to the shortage of volunteers.

“For every department that says it’s doing well, there probably are 10 that are not,” he said Tuesday. “There are multiple factors, one of the big ones is that training requirements have gone up across the country as the jobs become more complex, and rightfully so. For an EMT, it’s now 160 hours of training or more, and that can turn off volunteers.”

People also have more demands on their time, with many more families working two jobs than there were in past decades, he said.

“People have just gotten busier, and the time just isn’t there,” he said.

For ambulance service, it’s especially difficult because the volume of runs is higher than it is for firefighters, he said.

“Typically, you’ve got people at work during the day, and sometimes farther away from their work than they used to be, and also, the employers can’t spare them,” he said. “The environment is tougher and tougher for people to function as volunteers.”

In a recent survey of Ohio departments, he said, 2,500 responses came back, of which 75 percent indicated they didn’t have enough volunteers.

“It’s a pretty widespread problem,” he said.

Michael Kelly can be contacted at mkelly@mariettatimes.com.

Oak Grove Volunteer Fire Department

• Proposing use of paid EMTs on Monday through Friday day shifts.

• The plan would require an additional tax levy .

• A meeting for township residents to discuss the plan is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at the Oak Grove Fire Hall, 102 Oak Grove Lane.

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