County prepares to consider changing fire district boundaries

Daily Dispatch, The (Henderson, NC)

Aug. 29--HENDERSON -- County officials are now considering some fire and response district changes, tweaks they believe would improve response times and increase department efficiency.

The redistricting topic arose at the July public safety committee meeting, but it's been in the works for much longer, Vance County Commissioner Dan Brummit said.

These potential changes are just the next step in a department reorganization plan that kicked off nearly a decade ago with the culmination of a county-wide fire study.

The redistricting topic comes on the heels of another change that saw County Commissioners approve funding in this year's budget for two paid part-time firefighters to be placed at most volunteer fire stations across the county.

"I think [those new positions] make it a little bit easier for those departments to respond," McMillen told the Dispatch after the committee's meeting Tuesday. "This sort of follows up that process that we did in this year's budget to now just look at the districts and ensure that the folks that are getting response are getting the quickest one."

The idea is that "if there is an area that may be closer to one fire station, it may be better for that area to be a part of the response for that district," he added.

There are two key areas McMillen recommended for redistricting consideration.

The first, a Brummitt priority also, involves the southern side of the city of Henderson.

This area is currently a part of the Golden Belt fire district, but mileage-wise, it's closer to the Bearpond Volunteer Fire Department's district. McMillen said he thinks Bearpond would be able to respond quicker than Vance County Fire Department there, as VCFD responders have to drive through the city to get to the southern end of Henderson.

The other area is between the Golden Belt District and the Drewery fire district northeast of the city, which McMillen believes service would be more efficient if the Golden Belt district was expanded.

Though those are his initial recommendations, solid redistricting plans won't take shape for a while.

Volunteer fire departments still need to collaborate in person and in October, the county fire department and most volunteer stations will undergo ISO (Insurance Services Office) testing, which will give them a rating based on calculations of how well-equipped departments are to extinguish fires in their community.

No redistricting decisions will be made until those ISO rating outcomes are received.

"Depending on the ratings they get in that testing, insurance rates can be lowered for citizens," McMillen said. "The challenge is not just, 'Do we want to grow this district?' It is 'Well, is the district next to yours better than yours?'"

"If you take citizens and put them in a district that has a higher rating -- higher is worse -- than those individuals would pay higher insurance," he continued. "We want to wait until the testing is over to see where those ratings fall out before we make any changes."

For now, they'll kick off conversations between volunteer fire departments at a public meeting in mid-September. The county Fire and Rescue Association, an independent group that advocates for volunteer fire departments, will meet with the Public Safety Committee to have input from all departments involved in any potential changes. The meeting's supposed to happen on Monday, Sept. 16, at the Epsom Fire Department at 7 p.m.

During the meeting, participants will discuss a county-produced map that highlights overlaps in the five-mile area around each fire station. Typically, within five miles of a fire station, people can benefit from insurance reductions, depending on the rating of that volunteer fire department.

In looking where lines could be redrawn, those overlap regions show where the response district can be moved for any given district, or where it can't be moved.

"It focuses the discussion," McMillen said.

Of the nine districts, many won't even be touched. But it's important for volunteer fire departments to be involved in the conversation because "we don't want to unilaterally change their districts without their involvement," McMillen said.

At Tuesday's meeting, Brummitt asked Brian Short, director of Henderson-Vance emergency operations, to pull computer-aided dispatch data that would form a map showing the number of emergency calls and their locations, so officials can take those numbers into account when redrawing lines.

After the September meeting, the committee will likely delve into more detail and make a recommendation to the County Commissioners for approval, McMillen said.

"In a perfect world, if you were starting from scratch with the technology we have now, we could say, 'These are where the fire stations need to go for the volunteer fire departments,'" McMillen said. "The challenge is -- fast forward however many years and -- they are already in place."

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