Volunteer professionals

To the editor:

Volunteer departments are saving communities. They save millions of dollars every year, yet we still have to flip pancakes and call bingo numbers to keep the doors open and trucks running.

Volunteer departments may have been able to pay for everything decades ago, but now that new equipment can set you back hundreds of thousands of dollars, that is a lot of pancakes.

Some people assume their taxes pay for the service; some town leaders think that the department is funded by donations. This shortsighted approach by some communities is going to cost them in the long run.

Each volunteer has a limited amount of time he or she can donate. The end result, in many locations, is that the community has to pay for paid staff, costing millions every year, in addition to providing the equipment, apparatus and buildings.

Local governments are great at responding to problems, but not necessarily in preventing them. Politicians fear that raising taxes to pay for basic firefi ghting equipment may cost them their next election.

Additionally, if they do not plan on being in office for long, they see this fire service issue as someone else's problem. A small tax hike now to support the volunteer department may actually prevent or delay a much larger tax hike when the community goes to a paid service, but this is difficult for some to understand.

Firefighters cannot continue to provide a professional level of services as a volunteer if we are not supported. We are asking our volunteers to spend hundreds of hours training just to respond to calls and maintain competency. Communities that do not fund their departments are asking these same members to give up their weekends or nights to raise the funds to pay for equipment.

It means that between training and fund-raising, many members have given all of their available time.

Jason Zigmont East Berlin VFD