Rural Fire Authority asking for millage increase

The Mason County Rural Fire Authority is asking voters to increase the current operating tax rate from 1 mill to 2 mills when they vote during the Aug. 5 election. The operating tax rate has been 1 mill for the past 30 years. In 2014, the authority also asked for a 10 year millage rate of .5 to pay for new trucks.

Authority officials say the current tax rate no longer is enough to provide adequate coverage to the 16 municipalities it serves. The current millage rate generates about $742,000 annually. If passed, 2 mills will generate just over $2 million in the first year.

Some of the issues that would be addressed with a millage increase would include needed station repairs, personnel wage increases, training wage increases, equipment replacements and maintenance, and the hiring of full time personnel.

The Mason County Rural Fire Authority was formed in 1996 after the Mason County Board of Commissioners chose to eliminate funding of fire service in the county, a responsibility it had shared with the county’s townships, villages and cities since 1947.

Initially, a plan was formulated to create a county-wide authority that would have included a governing board over the county’s 11 fire departments. However, voters turned down that millage. As a result three entities were formed: The Western Mason County Fire District, which serves as a purchasing entity for the City of Ludington, Hamlin Township, and Pere Marquette Township — while still maintaining autonomous control over the individual departments; Carr Area Fire Department, which is funded by taxpayers in Logan Township; and the Mason County Rural Fire Authority, which covers the City of Scottville, villages of Free Soil, Fountain, and Custer, and townships of Grant, Free Soil, Meade, Victory, Sherman, Sheridan, Amber, Custer, Branch, Riverton, Eden, and Summit.

As part of the charter of the Mason County Rural Fire Authority, the municipalities have traditionally been responsible for providing stations for the departments with the authority handling maintenance. For several years, the municipalities helped pay the wages of the firefighters, but that practice ended, putting the burden on the fire authority.

The fire authority is governed by a five-person board appointed by the 16 elected boards of each municipality. Four of those board members represent geographical areas while one serves at-large. The authority also employs an administrator, Dale Goodrich, a retired Michigan State Police trooper and instructor who also serves as a seasonal marine patrol deputy for the Mason County Sheriff’s Office.

In 2023, the authority board formed an ad hoc planning committee to study the authority’s needs. The committee included a combination of citizens and firefighters. That committee determined made several recommendations to maintain and/or improve the current level of service provided by the fire authority.

Those recommendations included:

• Continuation of exploring opportunities to improve recruitment of active volunteer personnel, including forming a task group to push for West Shore Community College and West Shore Educational Service District to develop offerings geared toward fire training and emergency response services to engage youths’ interests in future involvement.
• Address the wages shortfall.
• Relocate the Scottville Fire Department station from the City of Scottville to the US 10-31 corridor between the city limits and Stiles Road. The new station should be built to accommodate full time staff. “Provide daytime or full tiem station coverage by manning with volunteer or career staff.”
• Provide coverage of the western portions of Amber and Victory townships. Currently, this is a service that is contracted with the Western Mason County Fire District.
• Contract with an outside consultant to study the authority’s needs in further detail.
• Develop an “operational road map” to understand funding needs.
• Restructure the authority’s hierarchy. Currently each individual station has a chief, each of the seven chiefs are of equal standing within the authority. Additionally, the authority employs what it defines as a support staff administrator (Goodrich), falling short of allowing that administrator any authority over the chiefs. The planning committee recommended the authority consider a department administrative chief to “focus on department-wide matters like implementing future department goals and providing department level chain of command taking that onus off of the governing body.”

Goodrich said the committee also reviewed the authority’s budget and the expenses it faces, operating without any changes.

“If the authority operates under the current 1 mill and doesn’t make any changes, by the end of 10 years, it will be almost $6 million in the negative,” Goodrich said. “If we increased the millage to 1.5 mill, we still face a deficit. The only formula that worked was an increase to 2 mills.”

“Operating a fire department costs a lot more now than it did 20 years ago,” Goodrich said.

Goodrich said the planning committee’s recommendations are the foundation of the request for more operating dollars, however, the authority currently has no formal plans to implement any of the proposed changes. He said the current authority charter limits its ability to purchase buildings, but the authority board would like to move forward with the hiring of two full time personnel.

Currently, all personnel employed by the fire authority, with the exception of Goodrich, are considered paid-per-call. They do not have scheduled hours and respond to emergencies through the use of pagers and cellular alert applications of their phones. They are also paid to attend mandatory trainings.

Goodrich said the proposed two full time firefighters would not be assigned to any particular station but instead would perform office tasks during their shifts — until called to an emergency.

“They would be doing various jobs at the seven stations, such as inventory and reviewing training records.” Goodrich said it’s likely the full time personnel would also become instructors as well. However, neither would have any authority within each individual station’s chain of command. They would also be provided an emergency response vehicle.

Details on wages and benefits have not yet been determined.

The need to increase the current wages of the paid-per-call/volunteer personnel would also be addresses, Goodrich said. Compared to

Currently a certified firefighter and/or medical first responder in the authority gets paid $18 per hour on calls for service and $15 per hour for training. A non-certified (probationary) firefighter gets paid $15 per hour. There is no increase based on experience and additional training.

While officers get paid the same hourly wage, they do receive annual stipends: Chiefs, $1,834; assistant chiefs, $1,267; captains, $569; lieutenants, $334; safety officers, $284.

Comparatively, in Pere Marquette Township, a certified firefighter is paid $45 per hour, a certified firefighter with a medical certification is paid $50 per hour, and a probationary firefighter, $30 per hour. Officers are paid more.

Goodrich said if the millage request does not pass, the fire authority is still funded until the end of 2026 under the present 1 mill.

“If it doesn’t pass, we would have to come back to the table and figure out how to make adjustments,” Goodrich said.

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