Pennsylvania Communities Debate Charging for Mutual Aid

Butler officials, concerned that the city’s paid firefighters are being called too often to emergencies in outlying communities, are talking about charging those towns for emergency assistance.

Better think twice about that, said the manager of Butler Township, the city’s most populous neighbor.

“We have never negotiated anything like that. You have to actually agree to do something like that, and they have not even talked to us about that,” said township Manager Ed Kirkwood.

The city has the only paid municipal fire department in Butler County. About 100 of 3,092 calls the department received in 2014 were for fires, medical situations or accidents outside of the city of Butler. On average, each call costs about $573, said Butler fire Chief Nick Ban.

Earlier this month, Butler had to pay overtime when it called in extra firefighters at the same time its regular on-duty crew responded to a vehicle accident in Summit, several miles and two townships away.

City Council, during its meeting Tuesday, discussed imposing mutual-aid fees.

“It is great to help your neighbors. It’s getting tougher and tougher to support a paid department,” said Councilwoman Kathy Kline, who chairs council’s public safety committee.

What goes around, comes around, Kirkwood said, noting that Butler Township last year responded to 142 mutual-aid calls in the city of Butler.

“There is no language involving invoicing in the mutual-aid agreement. This is extremely upsetting,” he said.

Kirkwood said the city did approach the township several years ago attempting to charge for emergency responses, but later dropped the request.

If the city does charge for fire mutual aid, it would be the first municipality in the county to do so, said Steve Bicehouse, the county’s emergency services director.

“To my knowledge nobody is charging for services,” Bicehouse said.

Butler County has had a countywide mutual aid agreement since 2002, Bicehouse said.

The agreement was drawn up by municipal officials, he said, and municipalities are free to pull out.

Some Butler residents, such as Kline, wonder how fair mutual-aid agreements are for a city with declining population and per capita income.

“The city taxpayer is footing the bill for a lot of this. Butler is probably one of the poorest municipalities in the county, per capita,” she said.

Average annual income in the city is $42,702 compared to a county average of $79,709, according to the Census Bureau.

The city spends about $1.77 million each year to operate its fire department, which employs a chief and 18 firefighters.

Concerns in Butler come amid a persistent and steep decline in the number of volunteer firefighters nationally and in Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania, more than 96 percent of firefighters are volunteers. The number of volunteers has declined from 300,000 in 1970 to just 50,000 today, according to the state fire commissioner’s office.

The decline has led to higher home insurance rates and increased demands on volunteer firefighters, according to Cranberry Supervisor Bruce Mazzoni.

In 1996, Butler County 911 issued 75,000 fire dispatches. By 2013, the last year for which data is available, that number had grown to 94,250.

“This has been a problem for years. There are not as many volunteers. Communities just aren’t centered around the fire hall anymore,” Ban said.

Mazzoni said volunteer departments save millions because municipalities don’t have to maintain paid fire companies.

“It is a tremendous savings that our volunteers give to us,” he said.

Cranberry this year is launching a Volunteer Firefighter Initiative to recruit and train volunteer firefighters throughout Butler County. The project is expected to cost $500,000.

The National Fire Protection Association estimates volunteers save more than $139.8 billion each year for local governments.

Yet more stringent training standards mean it now takes hundreds of hours to get certified, and new firefighters often must cover the cost of training.

“Many people just have no time. There was no training when I was a fire chief 50 years ago,” said Bill McCarrier, a Butler County commissioner who was chief in West Sunbury in the 1960s.

Rick Wills is a staff writer for Trib Total Media.He can be reached at 412-320-7944or rwills@tribweb.com