The challenges facing Harpswell’s three volunteer fire and rescue departments aren’t unknown to those planning for the town’s long-term future.
A section on public facilities and services in the working draft of Harpswell’s 2024 comprehensive plan acknowledges right up front “the declining number of volunteers and the aging of the general population” as factors that could affect the future viability of local fire and ambulance services.
It also notes rising housing costs, potential climate change impacts and a regional shortage of candidates for paid firefighting and emergency medical technician jobs.
“To continue to provide high-quality service to Harpswell, the town will need to continue supporting the funding needs of emergency services,” the draft states. “This may require adjustments to how the town plans for and resources its public facilities and services.”
In the future, a lack of volunteer personnel will drive the need for more paid staff and/or greater reliance on mutual aid agreements with neighboring communities, the draft says.
Still, it notes that career staffing alone won’t be adequate to replace all the roles currently served by volunteers, and that relying more on neighboring towns would increase average response times.
“Additional paid firefighter-EMTs may be necessary in the future to supplement the volunteers,” the draft states. “However, the ability to hire additional paid firefighter-EMTs will be impacted by limited availability of qualified personnel in the region (staffing shortage).”
The draft outlines a policy of maintaining adequate fire and ambulance services to protect people and property, along with eight strategies to achieve that aim. They include ensuring adequate funding for facilities and staff, boosting volunteer recruitment, updating communications infrastructure to be compatible with the county’s dispatching service, and considering the need for a centrally located fire and rescue building on Mountain Road.
Other strategies include ensuring adequate capital for future vehicle and equipment purchases, continuing to support mutual aid agreements, promoting townwide coordination among all fire and rescue departments, and considering an upgrade to the Cundy’s Harbor Volunteer Fire Department’s facilities.
In addition to the pending comprehensive plan, the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department has embarked on its own strategic planning process that it hopes will serve as a model for the other local fire departments, according to its president, Ted Merriman.
Merriman said any discussion about strategic planning invariably raises sensitive issues and concerns, such as whether talking about future taxpayer-funded investments in fire and rescue services could alienate existing donors and volunteers.
“If we start asking more from our townsfolk from a tax base standpoint, does that then inversely affect us from a donation standpoint?” Merriman said. “If the town is investing in fire and rescue service, and we’re paying for it with our taxes, then why are volunteers going to be waking up at 2 in the morning to go do a run in the middle of the winter?”
But town emergency services officials must continue to walk the line between making sure the community is well served today and planning ahead for what might be needed tomorrow, he said.
Merriman said town fire officials want their services to be neither an unreliable Ford Pinto nor an expensive Porsche, but rather a high-end Toyota Corolla that is reasonably priced and yet more than adequate to do the job.
To that end, he said, Harpswell’s three fire departments will continue looking for more ways to coordinate and share resources, breaking down some of the barriers that have long separated them.
“We love each other,” Merriman said about the three fire departments. “We will literally walk through fire and over broken glass, barefoot, to help another volunteer in one of the other departments. But, operationally, we are siloed.”
