LEYDEN — Alternative options for fire protection have been on the Selectboard’s mind, in at least some capacity, for almost two decades, according to Selectboard Chairman Bill Glabach.
But the news two weeks ago that the Selectboard had drafted a contract with Greenfield to provide fire protection came as an unwelcome surprise to Brian Pelletier, the Leyden Fire Department’s officer-in-charge and de facto chief. He had heard that the Selectboard was talking with Greenfield, but most of what he knew was from an article in the December issue of Leyden Life, the town newsletter.
The deal now on the table is, for $40,000 a year, Leyden gets fire coverage, inspection and code enforcement through Greenfield’s full-time fire department. Greenfield gets Leyden’s 2008 tanker and 1987 firetruck in exchange for a $14,400 discount on Leyden’s payments for the first seven years.
Greenfield Mayor William Martin plans to bring it to City Council this month. On Leyden’s side, the deal needs a signature from the Selectboard chair. The cost would be included in the town’s omnibus budget that goes through Town Meeting every year.
“I think (Greenfield) will be very close to the cost we have now,” Glabach said. “And if it does cost a little more, it’s because we’ll be getting a little more. … We’d have a full-time fire department. It just wouldn’t have the name ‘Leyden’ on the truck.”
Still, Pelletier doesn’t support it. There are only three ways for a firetruck from Greenfield to get into Leyden, he said. In the perfect storm, for example, with trees down on all three roads, the town would have no protection.
So, he said, the Selectboard told him in a meeting Monday night to come up with a proposal that’s workable and comparable in cost to the Greenfield deal.
“We need to sit down. These are our problems, this is what’s going on, and explore all our avenues,” Pelletier said. “I can’t fix something if no one tells me it’s broken.”
The Selectboard’s interest in outsourcing Leyden’s fire protection, Glabach said, has always been a perceived over-reliance on mutual aid, mostly coming from Bernardston, Colrain and Greenfield.
“If they’re the first ones there and they’re handling all the calls, that’s not mutual aid. That’s the fire department.” Glabach said. “There was a feeling among ourselves that it wasn’t right.”
That Leyden’s current membership is unusually low doesn’t help. The department now has seven members, two of whom live in Leyden, five in Greenfield. Ideally it would have at least a dozen, said Pelletier.
Responding to calls hasn’t been a problem, Pelletier said. Last June, the fire on Frizzell Hill Road had a five-man crew within 12 minutes.
The problem has been the upkeep and maintenance of equipment. With no full-time employees in the Fire Department and only a few in Town Hall, no one has time to do the “paperwork,” he said.
This year, Leyden budgeted about $20,000 for the Fire Department, representing a 14 percent cut to payroll and a 7 percent cut to the expense account from last year’s budget, Pelletier said. But it isn’t simply a choice between $20,000 for the in-town volunteer department and $40,000 for Greenfield’s, Glabach said.