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March 29th, 2024

warden county fire discussionAdministrator April Warden talks to commissioners Monday about the possibility of adding two more firefighters the Seward County Fire Department. Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the hiring. L&T photo/Robert PierceROBERT PIERCE • Leader & Times

 

Monday morning, Seward County commissioners hosted a work session to discuss possible additional staffing for the county’s fire department.

That discussion came after commissioners met last week with department heads in the county’s annual budget work session.

The two work sessions culminated in a lengthy discussion Monday night during the commission’s regular meeting. Commission Chair Ada Linenbroker began by reviewing what had happened at Monday morning’s work session.

“We had representatives of the fire department, and all three of our firefighters came and gave their presentations,” she said.

Linenbroker then asked commissioners for their thoughts on what should be done. Two commissioners immediately showed their support.

“In my opinion, I want to hire two more firefighters,” Commissioner Randy Malin said. 

“After hearing the presentation this morning,  I will also support that,” Commissioner Nathan McCaffrey said.

Commissioners would eventually vote unanimously to allow Fire Chief Andrew Barkley to hire two additional firefighters.

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Commissioner Steve Helm, however, felt the issue was part of a bigger problem.

“For months, I’ve requested a special meeting to discuss the entire department,” he said. “That has not happened. Apparently, no one is hearing us, so now, we have a special meeting all of a sudden for one segment. We need to discuss the whole fire department operation. I’m not opposed to this, but it’s the whole department, not just a rush decision for two employees.”

McCaffrey said Administrator April Warden had let commissioners know such a work session had been requested.

“Either nobody got back to her with dates, or there was an inability to arrive at a concensus with dates,” McCaffrey said. “I don’t want the public to get the impression that goes back on administration. I would say it would probably be more of a reflection of the rest of us who have been dealing with this situation longer than you have Commissioner Helm.”

At last week’s budget work session, Barkley was the last department head to give a presentation, and McCaffrey said commissioners were given ample time and information about the issue at that time. He added commissioners, though, did not ask any questions at that time.

Warden too said the request for a work session had been shared with Barkley, and she said the fire chief provided commissioners with more than ample information for the budget session.

“That is the reason the packet you found in your budget binders was so lengthy,” she said. “He was trying to address any questions he felt would come up in a work session because it had been asked for. He was trying to address everything in there. Yes, it was a lot of information.”

Linenbroker said she had told Warden to set a date for a work session about all of the issues of the fire department.

“When she kept sending the messages out, I said, ‘As soon as you can get a date scheduled, whatever the date was, I would be willing to attend a work session on the fire department,’” Linenbroker said.

The commission chair added much of Barkley’s budget information talked about the lack of volunteers in the department and when they would show up.

“It wasn’t just Andrew,” she said. “The staff worked on this really hard to get us the information we needed to look at it. After we had our meeting, I had another meeting with the fire department on Friday afternoon and got to listen to the employees and how they felt and why they felt they needed to have these other two employees.”

Linenbroker said after listening to members of the fire department, she too agreed the department is understaffed.

“Our guys do not have enough people that, if we were to have a fire, they’re not ever going to be able to get free and spend time with their families,” she said. “That’s why I called the special session this morning and allow the guys to come in and explain the same thing they had talked to me about.”

In his comments, Commissioner C.J. Wettstein said many counties surrounding Seward County were doing well in terms of volunteers for their fire departments.

“The ones down in Oklahoma, they don’t even get paid,” he said. “I have discussed adding additional pay to our on-call firefighters. I don’t know if that would help to get more response to the fires.”

Wettstein did say the issue of volunteer firefighters did need to be looked at strongly.

“I think we need to look at why we are not having volunteer firefighters,” he said. “We had two of them just quit in Kismet in the last month or two. They had been volunteer firefighters for 33 years.”

Like Helm, though, Wettstein said there are more problems that need to be addressed.

“I think if we really are going to try to solve the problem and look at it and see what we’ve got, we’re going to have to do a lot of discussion on what are we going to do to get volunteer firefighters,” Wettstein said.