NEWPORT — Newport Township took a step this week to bring a fire department back to the township. .

The three-member Newport Township Board of Trustees voted during a meeting Thursday night for John Rush to be Newport’s new fire chief, according to Township Fiscal Officer Bonnie Hockenberry.

Rush is from Newport and lives very close to the fire department, Hockenberry said, and “he works at Dupont and he’s had extensive fire training through Dupont and he was a prior member of the fire department.”

The old Newport Volunteer Fire Department Inc. that Rush worked at, was dissolved in April by a judgment approved by Washington County Common Pleas Court Judge Mark Kerenyi.

The efforts to dissolve the department, which functioned as a private corporation that provided fire and emergency services to Newport Township, started with a Jan. 12 complaint filed by Washington County Prosecuting Attorney Nicole Coil with the Fourth Appellate District Court of Appeals of Ohio, that stated the fire department entered into a mutual aid agreement with surrounding volunteers fire departments on Jan. 10, 2022, and by early January 2023 it had ceased providing any fire or emergency response services and by November 2023 the township trustees had formally authorized the routing of all first response tones to bypass the fire department and go directory to mutual aid agencies.

The judgment alleged the board of the department had not held a meeting since on or before Aug. 17, 2023, and it did not have a sufficient quorum to function nor was the board willing to take any action to transfer the entity to new leadership or to formally dissolve it and this inaction put the community at risk.

A receiver was appointed in April to dissolve the Newport Volunteer Fire Department Inc. and to create a new entity to serve as the successor to the department, according to an April 12 Newport Township Board of Trustees Facebook post.

The township has been working ever since to get a department up and running, according to numerous board of trustees Facebook posts.

The new fire department will “be a township-run fire department,” Hockenberry said, and while the structure of the department still needs to be determined, Rush “will be the main leader of the fire department.”

She said the township will pay the bill of the new fire department and it will have financial oversight of the department.

Two people submitted resumes to be the new fire chief and the trustees unanimously picked Rush, according to Trustee Rodeny Seevers.

“I do believe the trustees were fair in the way they did the vote,” he said.

He said Rush is a local person, which is in the best interest of the people in Newport Township and he “felt (Rush) was the best qualified person to do the job.”

Rush will be the one to select the people who make up the department, from the assistant fire chief on down, according to Seevers.

“I do believe (Rush) will hit the ground running … there’s a lot of work that has to be done before it’s officially on the road in operation,” Seevers said of the new department.

Rush is honored to be picked as the new chief.

“It’s a really bad thing that’s happened to the fire department,” Rush said, but they have excellent support from the other local volunteer fire departments to help get to the point where they can respond to calls.

“We have already started talking to people” about joining the department, Rush said, and one of the first things he needs to do is make sure the new department is in compliance with all regulations and codes.

He said the department will test all the equipment to make sure it’s safe and will get things that need to be repaired.

The chances of the department being up and running this year are “very, very slim” Rush said, but he is hoping they will be officially operating at the beginning of next year.

He said he will be giving monthly updates to the Board of Trustees on the department’s progress.

“Hopefully we’ll be responding here real soon,” Rush said.