City’s joint fire departments will separate if new contract isn’t negotiated

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio

Mayor John Royalty’s May 1 letter to the chairman of the Bardstown-Nelson County Volunteer Fire Department. Click to enlarge.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015, 10 p.m. — The leaders of the dues-funded non-profit Bardstown-Nelson County Volunteer Fire Department Inc. face a May 15 deadline to negotiate a new contract with Bardstown and Mayor John Royalty or vacate the North Fifth Street fire station it shares with the taxpayer-funded Bardstown Fire Department.

Since 1966, the two departments have co-existed and operated as one, though administratively they operate separately. The Bardstown-Nelson County Volunteer Fire Department handles fire protection outside the corporate city limits of Bardstown; the Bardstown Fire Department handles fire protection inside the city limits. Each department buys equipment that they share.

This 49-year record of cooperation will come to an end if negotiations for a new contract between the city and the BNCVFD (known among firefighters as “the corporation”) isn’t signed before June 30.

Merging the two departments has been discussed several times over the years. Last month Royalty asked the corporation’s board to consider funding half of a study to examine a possible merger of the two departments. The corporation did not agree to help fund the study, Royalty said Tuesday.

In a May 1 letter to corporation chairman Stacy Faulkner, Royalty laid out the terms for a new 10-year contract that would end the corporation’s role as an active fire department. The contract would require the corporation to cease its operations as a fire department and contract with the City of Bardstown for fire protection to the corporation’s protection areas outside the Bardstown city limits.

The contract would require the corporation to incrementally raise its fire dues from $50 per household to $70 per household over a 10-year span. Commercial dues would increase in a similar manner. The corporation would also be required to increase its financial contributions to the City of Bardstown by 2 percent each year over 10 years.

The Bardstown Fire Department would take over maintenance and upkeep on the firefighting equipment and trucks the corporation owns and will continue to own. The city fire department would provide sufficient manpower — paid and volunteer — to provide adequate fire protection to the areas inside and outside the city limits.

In an interview Tuesday evening, Royalty said the corporation must respond one way or the other by May 15. The existing contract between the corporation and the City of Bardstown expires June 30.

If no agreement is reached and the contract expires, Royalty said he will give the corporation a 90 or 120 days notice they must vacate the city fire department building.

In a response to media queries about the proposed contract, Royalty said that since 2003 — when Nelson Fiscal Court set the corporation’s fire dues at $50 — the funding of the two departments has become unfair to Bardstown taxpayers, whose money has been essentially subsidizing fire protection outside the city limits.

The city’s contribution to the operation of the departments was $525,000 in 2003, and has increased yearly to $1.1 million in 2015. The corporation’s fire dues have remained the same; Royalty noted that of the nearly $500,000 the corporation collects annually, it contributes $120,000 to the operation of the departments.

Increasing the corporation fire dues won’t completely eliminate the funding imbalance, but the combined departments will “still maintain the efficiency that comes from a consolidated department,” Royalty said.

Arguments to merge or separate the fire departments each have merits and drawbacks, he said. Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, Royalty said he was working to insure city residents have the quality fire protection they have always had.

The decision to separate the two fire departments rests with the corporation’s board, Royalty said. He said he will wait for a response until May 15, “then we can go forward or we can go our different ways.”

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