The Owen-Withee-Curtiss Fire District met on Thursday, September 19, 2024 with all members represented. The first order of business was to deal with a billing dispute. Bruce Cizik was on hand to dispute a bill he had received for $1,115.10 for a grass fire. On a windy day a tree on his property had blown over and started a fire on his neighbor’s property. Cizik argued that Mother Nature started the fire, it wasn’t a dead tree, and wind gusts took the tree over. Cizik said he didn’t call the fire in and it wasn’t on his property. He said it was a 10’x10’ grass fire and it was out in five minutes. The tree took down a power line which is what started the fire.

The town of Hixon, where Cizik’s property is located, paid the bill for the fire and then billed Cizik. Art Petke Jr., representing the town of Longwood, said he had a problem with blaming nature and suggested that maybe Cizik could work out some sort of cost sharing with the neighbors on whose property the fire was actually located. Fire Chief Travis Serocki said it was not a natural disaster, just a windy day. Cizik asked that the fire department reimburse the town of Hixon. He said you can’t control the weather. He also questioned who was liable, the power company, the caller, the tree owner, or the property owner where the fire was located. If the bill is not paid, the town of Hixon will assess it on Cizik’s property taxes. The minimum amount for a fire call was billed, in addition to equipment and labor. Jason Thornton, representing the city of Owen, suggested dropping the minimum fee and only charging for actual labor and equipment. He said fires are always billed to the location where they start. Cizik said that Clark Electric trims the trees in that area every year. He said they must not have felt the tree was a problem or they wouldn’t have left it there. He said this is an unusual case. Petke said if they adjusted the bill, the town of Longwood would protest that the church fire was an act of God. Mark Nosko, town of Maplehurst, also had an example of a fire where the property owner didn’t want to pay the bill for a fire and it was put on his taxes. The board voted to do nothing with the bill.

They then moved on to the 2025 budget. Serocki used the equalized values for each member of the district to come up with their assessment. He said that Curtiss had a significant drop in value. Thornton said that Curtiss was going to owe nothing for their assessment because of the rent the district pays for the Curtiss Fire Hall. He doesn’t think that is right. The fire budget overall was increased 1.2 percent. Serocki lowered the amounts on some of the line items, a few others went up. He upped the pay for fire fighters to $15.50 per hour, which resulted in an approximate $3,000 increase to the budget. The fee schedule was also updated to reflect the additional cost of equipment and labor.

The EMS budget was discussed. Serocki said that historically no tax revenue has gone to support the ambulance. He now has to do reports for each of the clerks in regard to Act 12 supplemental shared revenue. He has to report on four items: 1) the contribution to the fire department, not including capital expenses, 2) the number of full-time equivalent fire fighters and emergency medical services personnel, 3) the level of training and maintenance of licensure (if they lose an EMT, they have to get a new one, 4) response times. Each municipality has to meet at least two of the items showing their maintenance of effort.

Serocki went on to talk about the fact that the average call is 32 miles and takes 2-2½ hours. They are the lowest paid EMS service in the area. They are requesting extra pay for on-call time hoping more people will sign up. The cost added to each municipality would be $4,212 if split evenly. He said it helps with their response time if people are on call and they don’t have to page for people. With the extra on-call pay, other incentives would no longer be offered. Those incentives hadn’t resulted in more people signing up. Treasurer Grace Dale said they mostly just moved budget numbers around, but did add in a 2 percent raise for Chief Serocki and Deputy Chief Wilczek. The additional assessment could be evenly split or based on equalized valuation. Medicaid calls are low in our area and most of the calls are paid by Medicare and Medicare Advantage. Private insurance calls are also low. Owen-Withee-Curtiss is now considered Advanced Life Support because they have advanced EMTs. This has resulted in less intercept calls that they have to pay Marshfield for at the rate of $150 per call. In 2019, they had 59 intercepts, with nine cancelled. So far in 2024, they have had 14 intercepts, five of them cancelled. Serocki explained that because of them being Advanced Life Support, most calls are paid at the rate of $100 more and they don’t have to pay the intercept fees, so that is actually an increase of $250.

Petke said they have never paid for ambulance and this is a sizeable increase to the township budget. He suggested giving fire fighters an extra $2 per hour, instead of the $1 per hour requested. Serocki pointed out that they have far more ambulance calls than fire calls in a year. After discussion, the board agreed to the $4,212 being added to each municipality’s assessment, including $3 per hour for on-call pay. They then voted to increase fire fighter wages by $2.50 per hour to $18.00. The budgets were accepted.

Assessments by municipality are: Green Grove $45,225.32; Hixon $46,738.11; Hoard $39,733.30; Longwood $48,674.22; Curtiss $23,926.33; Withee $24,743.17; Owen $48,797.63; and Maplehurst $29,222.82.

The board doesn’t plan to meet again until January. In the meantime, they have a vehicle to sell. They voted to take it to Premier Auctions and sell it for whatever they can get for it.