Poll responders support consolidating VFSI

However, if you add those who favor combining VFSI with the county ambulance service and those who support combining it with the Shelbyville Fire Department, you would find a majority of respondents in favor of some sort of change.

Here is how the question was worded:

The county's Financial Management Committee recently discussed making changes to Volunteer Fire Services Inc. to save money. Which of these do you think would be the best action?

Here is how 221 participants responded to the poll:

• Try to consolidate VFSI with the county-owned ambulance service: 20.4% (45 votes)
• Try to consolidate VFSI with the Shelbyville Fire Department: 36.2% (80 votes)
• Leave VFSI as it is: 43.4% (96 votes)

VFSI is a private, non-profit agency to which the county contributes. It was created after a class action lawsuit on behalf of Shelbyville taxpayers resulted in the disbanding of Bedford County Fire Department. State law at the time did not allow a county-funded fire department which served only certain parts of the county, unless the county set up a special tax district requiring the people served by the department to pay for it.

But state law does allow the county to contribute to volunteer departments regardless of what area they serve. So VFSI was created and was allowed to lease the assets that formerly belonged to the county fire department. As an added insulation against lawsuits, the county's contributions to VFSI come from a special purpose fund derived from rural-related revenue like the "city share" of sales tax from businesses outside city limits.

VFSI says it needs more personnel to serve the rapidly-growing rural areas of the county. That led some members of the county financial management committee to discuss the idea of combining VFSI with another agency as a cost-saving measure:

* Bedford County Emergency Medical Services, the county-owned ambulance service, has ambulance halls or volunteer first responders in many of the same places where VFSI has volunteers.

* The other possibility would be for the county to try to convince the city to roll its fire department into a combined county-wide department. The city might be extremely reluctant to do this; the city right now enjoys an extremely favorable Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating due to its existing level of fire protection. City residents benefit from a good ISO rating because it's one factor used to determine homeowners' insurance premiums. Combining the city and county departments, and using that manpower and materiel to cover the entire county, would no doubt benefit the county's ISO rating while harming the city's.

Here are some of the comments left by poll participants about the issue.

* "Why not give it to [Bedford County Emergency Management Agency]? A lot of other county fire departments do it." (There were also two other comments with this same suggestion.)

* "If it's not broke, don't fix it."

* "I am a member of VFSI and we give our time and risk our lives because we care. We are not paid for our services because we believe in volunteering for the communities which we protect. Without VFSI, who will put out the fires throughout the county? No one would. Bedford County needs us, and we will continue to give our time and respect for the love of our communities that we love to protect."

* "It is still going to cost money for either more employees and stations or money to cross train employees .... You can't tell me, if they put us with the city fire, that if we don't have the employees and there is a fire way out in the county somewhere that the department is going to leave the citizens inside the city limits with out any fire or EMS protection. I think everyone in Shelbyville and Bedford County deserves the same amount of emergency protection. Putting whichever departments together is great, but it's going to take more people to do this, and more equipment, so the county finance department needs to think about what they are trying to do. I am not downing them or talking bad about them but let's just use our heads a little here, and ... find a way to get money in the county. If it is to raise the taxes two to three cents every year, that's what you need to do. Quit trying to make one person happy and do what's right for Bedford County."

* "Raise taxes to give Bedford County the services they need. It's time for people to accept that the good 'ole days are gone and move forward with some good solid infrastructure work."

* "No money will be saved. If people are cross-trained, they will leave for higher paying departments after the county has paid for their training. Also, all departments' salaries will have to be increased. So how will we save money?"

* "People come from everywhere when something happens anyways ... why not consolidate?"

* "The powers within tried something similar in England."

* "The city's got their ways and the county's got theirs. It just would not make sense to do this."

Any voluntary, self-selected poll is not considered scientific because there is no way to guarantee that the people who decided to participate represent a true cross-section of the public. Even so, such polls can be an interesting basis for discussion.