During a March 11th special public meeting in Whitemarsh Township, that wasn’t advertised to the public, a consultant was make a presentation on a study involving the township’s emergencies services to include the Barren Hill Fire Company, Spring Mill Fire Company, and Whitemarsh Community Ambulance.

What is essentially happening is that the two fire companies, which are independent organizations of each other and the township, have very different opinions on how fire services should move forward due to Issues involving funding, standards, training, equipment, recruitment, policies, etc.

Barren Hill supports the study’s recommendation that the township create a structure where the township hires a fire chief and a new single fire company or the two fire companies agree to operate under the authority of the fire chief. Spring Mill feels the current system of two independent fire companies works fine and that they already work together efficiently.

The five recommendations from the study are:

• Chief of Fire and Emergency Services / Township Department of Fire and Emergency Services [the township should create]
• Establish formal agreements with nonprofits. [the non-profits are the fire companies and the ambulance company]
• Implement unified organizational and operational structure.
• Transform ESB to Public Safety Coordinating Board. [ESB = Emergency Services Board]
• Fire Chief conduct community risk assessment and develop a standard of cover for fire and EMS.

The meeting started with Jacy Toll, the chair of the Whitemarsh Township Board of Supervisors, announcing that during a March 12th meeting of the supervisors, the agenda would include consideration of advertising an ordinance to create a director of public safety.

Based on that, the consultant then offered next steps for April to November, which representatives of Barren Hill Fire Company expressed disappointment in. These were not the recommendations from the study (that are outlined above).

Representatives of Barren Hill felt that the meeting was to be a launching pad to implement the study’s recommendations. Instead, the next steps, essentially would revisit issues that had just been studied and that the fire companies weren’t in agreement on. They felt a strong chief was needed to implement standards for response times and standards using the available data, not a return to debate or a negotiation. One member of the Barren Hill stated that he felt their time had been wasted in participating in the study.

There was also an issue involving a non-disclosure agreement that Spring Mill had asked the consultant to sign before providing certain information. When this issue was brought up, Spring Mill’s chief, Wayne Masters, cited the need to prevent information such as the township’s procedures from falling into the hands of terrorists.

There is a lot going on with this overall issue. If you want to get informed, you need to read the three documents MoreThanTheCurve.com obtained. This includes a one-pager, brief, and the full study.

Please note the ambulance company isn’t really part of the dispute between the two fire companies, but it has issues that need to be addressed as well, which we will cover separately.

More to come.