City ends automatic aid agreements with neighboring fire departments

May 13-- May 13--Property owners' insurance costs in certain areas around Bloomington could be impacted as the city's fire department terminates automatic aid agreements with neighboring fire departments.

Starting today, the informal automatic aid agreements -- when firefighters are automatically dispatched to a call for a given address without having to wait for another department to call for help -- currently in place will end for certain areas. They are just outside city limits and between the Bloomington Fire Department and county fire departments embedded in the countywide dispatch system.

While the automatic dispatching may end, Bloomington Fire Chief Jason Moore said fire departments will still be able to request assistance from the Bloomington Fire Department and vice versa.

The type of aid agreements a fire department maintains with neighboring departments could impact its Insurance Services Office rating. Moore said ISO ratings are important, because most insurance companies use them to underwrite insurance policies, potentially saving property owners money. Response times are another key factor the ISO considers when assigning ratings to fire departments. Moore said more weight is placed on how distant or close someone is to a fire station.

Monroe Fire Protection District Fire Chief Dustin Dillard said residents living within areas these automatic aid agreements served will experience delays as a result of the termination of these agreements.

"If the automatic aid resulted in a quicker first due response, both residents and businesses in the city and county will experience a delayed response," Dillard said.

The decision to terminate automatic aid was made after city fire officials talked to the local ISO representative. Moore said it was then that they learned that the Monroe Fire Protection District reported to ISO that they have automatic aid agreements with the city, even though technically, nothing official has been signed.

"When we get people claiming something that doesn't really exist, knowing that is something we are working toward, that is not something we are really interested in supporting," Moore said.

After discovering the fire protection district was making this claim, Moore said the city sent out a news release April 29 notifying the public and the neighboring fire departments of its intention to stop providing automatic aid. That announcement didn't sit well with some.

"Chief Moore has absolutely no idea what the contents of our conversation with ISO were," Dillard said. "For him to draw any conclusion and make such drastic ill-advised decisions is nothing short of negligent."

Dillard said the fire protection district clearly stated that automatic aid was being used in certain areas. He added the ISO representative responded that Moore refused to acknowledge this aid due to the lack of a written and signed agreement.

Moore said there are also liability issues that make it inadvisable to continue the practice of automatically sending firefighters to an area without the proper signed agreements. For example, he said if a business owner sues, which is becoming more common, they can argue in court that since there was no agreement, city fire should not have been at a scene in the first place.

"That is kind of why you don't do handshake agreements. You do legitimate official agreements, so you are not opened up to liability," Moore said.

Dillard said while Moore cites conversations with ISO representatives as the reason for ending the agreements, he feels it is much more than that. He said Moore had previously told him and others that he would end automatic aid if they continued to push Senate Bill 603, which allows certain fire protection districts to retain their territory and continue providing services if annexed by a nearby municipality. The governor signed that bill into law on May 5.

"I fully believe the ending of these automatic aid agreements and the specific timing is retaliation for legislation that passed just before the city's news release," Dillard said.

County departments come up with alternatives

Following the news release, the Monroe County Fire Chief's Association met in an emergency meeting April 30 to develop contingency response plans once city automatic aid ends.

Dillard said county fire departments worked out new automatic aid agreements between county fire departments based on the nearest available stations to fill the gap.

For example, he said the Monroe Fire Protection District will respond to Kingston Estates and major roadways off Ind. 46 East and Benton Township Volunteer Fire Department will respond further west on Ind. 45.

Even though contingencies have been figured out, many of the county fire chiefs were unhappy with the way the Bloomington Fire Department ended the automatic aid -- and the reason behind it. At the emergency meeting, some fire chiefs described the city's actions as a "slap in the face," and coming out of nowhere.

Moore disagreed.

He said for the past two years the Bloomington Fire Department led discussions with neighboring departments to achieve the service levels needed to formally adopt a countywide automatic aid agreement.

He said while progress was made on some aspects, such as standardizing communication equipment between departments and coordinating joint training exercises on a regular basis, there are other components needed that were not met.

Moore said the biggest challenge facing departments in moving toward automatic aid is staffing.

Moore said city residents pay a substantial amount of tax to have the level of service the Bloomington Fire Department provides. This includes staffing all fire trucks with four career personnel on each run.

However, he said due to a difference in operational models -- career departments versus combination career/volunteer fire departments and urban vs. rural environments -- other departments cannot match those staffing levels. He said part of automatic aid agreements is the equivalent exchange of services, and city and county fire departments are just not at that stage yet.

To overcome the staffing hurdle, he recommends township fire officials talk with their taxpayers and politicians about what is required and the benefits of increasing staffing.

That would require more funding. While the public safety local income tax is paid by all property owners in the county to support public safety services in Monroe, Moore said city officials do not support using those tax dollars to help with staffing. He said it is better reserved for capital purchases. That way the fund is not depleted by rising salaries, benefit costs and more overtime.

Public safety local income tax dollars have been used in the past to help move officials closer to having the foundations needed for an official automatic aid agreement. This included purchasing radios, self-contained breathing apparatus and mobile data terminals for fire departments.

Dillard said all township fire departments have worked diligently on upgrading services so they can move toward having formal automatic aid agreements. Beyond the capital purchases, they also have drafted common structural firefighting standard operation guidelines; formalized departmental training for all agencies on a quarterly basis; worked to increase staffing levels; and created a county training officer committee and fire investigator task force.

Dillard said whether the county would have automatic aid agreements with the city in the future depends on whether he fully understands why the city ended it in the first place.

Contact Ernest Rollins at 812-331-4357, [email protected] or @fromernestdesk.

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