The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
A more than 6-month standoff ended October 8 when a new contract was signed by teh East Franklin Volunteer Fire Department and the Fire District 3 Board of Commissioners.
EFVFD has been operating without a contract since April 1, when fire department brass refused to sign the new proposed agreement.
The District enters into yearly contracts with fire departments which allow the departments to fight fires. Fire District 3 contains roughly 30,000 residents, and also includes Community Volunteer Fire Department. Community signed the new contract in March.
At the crux of the issue with East Franklin were new stipulations the Commissioners included in the proposed contract, to which the EFVFD membership objected.
Those stipulations included removing new policies giving fire chiefs input into proposed policy changes, installing new video and audio recording devices in department vehicles and apparatus, and ending reimbursement for fire fighters’ personal property damaged or lost while responding to calls.
Board Chairman Sherrod Middleton drew the ire of the EFVFD membership when he threatened to shut down the fire department, reclaim all apparatus and firefighting gear – which the District owns and pays to store at the EFVFD fore house – and hire per diem firefighters to bridge the gap.
But EFVFD refused to budge, culminating in a September 17 meeting among Commissioner Kenneth Reid, Board Clerk Fatiima Braxton, and two members of EFVFD, which resulted in the agreement signed on October 8.
EFVFD Chief Dan Krushinski said the new contract was a victory for the fire department.
“We got 100% what we wanted,” he said after the meeting.
The new contracts contains a stipulation that if the department chiefs object to any new policy proposed by the Commissioners, a written complaint is made, and the District’s two chiefs will negotiate with two commissioners.
If no agreement is reached, then the matter goes to Public Safety Director Quovella Maeweather for mediation.
“It’s pretty simple, that’s what we asked for in March,” Krushinski said.
All of the policies that were included in the proposed contract rejected by the EFVFD will have to be negotiated, Krushinski said.
“The main concern for the firefighters if they’ve lost a watch, they broke their phone, or they broke their eyeglasses that this Board wanted you to pay for it yourself,” Krushinski said. “And that was one of our big fights. That’s been taken completely out of the contract and the insurance company will pick up the tab for anything that’s broken, damaged, at a fire scene.
Also removed from the contract is any time limit on extensions for signing new agreements, Krushinski said.
“I think we’re pretty happy with what happened here,” he said. “With the Board attorney and the two commissioners that sat down and met with my deputy chief and my ex-deputy chief, who was also a former fire commissioner, who wore both hats and understood both sides of it, that met with Commissioner Reed and Commissioner Braxton, who spent I guess two hours on September 17th to try and make all this come to a head tonight and it did.”
The moment when the new contract was voted upon:
We spoke to Chief Dan Krushinski after the meeting:
UPDATE: On October 15, the Board of Commissioners, through a PR agency, issued a press release on the new contract.
“We are pleased that we have reached an agreement that ensures public safety and maintains the transparency and fiscal responsibility owed to the taxpayers of Franklin Township,” Sherrod Middleton, Board Chairman, said in the release. “We are confident that Director Maeweather, as a neutral third party, will provide fair and balanced oversight should any future disputes arise. This resolution allows us to move forward, ensuring the protection of the residents without further delays.”
According to the release, the new contract “follows months of intense negotiation between the two parties. Central to the conflict was a provision in the previous contract that allowed the East Franklin Volunteer Fire Department to override policies enacted by the Fire Commissioners. The new contract corrects this imbalance, aligning the department’s agreement with the terms governing other fire companies in Franklin Township.”
“In the spirit of compromise, the Board of Commissioners agreed to introduce a process whereby, if the East Franklin Volunteer Fire Department disagrees with any policy proposed by the Commission, they may appeal to Director Maeweather,” according to the release. “This ensures that both parties retain a voice while preserving the Board’s authority to make decisions in the best interest of the community and its taxpayers.”
