WF Fire proposes to join the town

The independent Wake Forest Fire Department is requesting the Town of Wake Forest undertake a study of the feasibility to integrate the fire department into the town’s administration.

Wake Forest Town Manager Kip Padgett made the Nov. 9 letter public during the Nov. 20 town board meeting. The five commissioners, after a discussion, voted to hire a private company to conduct that study.

William Wandrack, president of the fire department’s board of directors, said the reason is employee benefits. “Currently, our firefighters have an excellent 401k plan that the department does a great job of supporting. However, it’s not quite the same as a true pension plan.

“As a not-for-profit, independent fire department, we are not eligible for the state pension plan. This is causing some issues with our retention and recruitment. Chief (Ron) Early has done an excellent job in researching ways to get our guys into the pension plan and it really boils down to a single option – become a true municipal department.

“As a board, it is our responsibility to ensure that we are doing what is best for our community and our firefighters. After long discussions with the chief and our employees, we’ve decided that now is a good time to explore becoming a municipal department.

“We have an excellent management team in place, we have a town manager who is very pro public safety and has been through this exact process at his previous job, and we have a board that is truly dedicated to doing what is best. It looks to us like we have all of the pieces in place to make this happen as smoothly and efficiently as possible.”

As for the next steps, Wandrack said, “I have delivered a letter to Town Manager Kip Padgett and Mayor Jones, asking them to begin the process. Kip and I had a great discussion and I feel quite confident that this is the right time to do this.

“The town has decided to begin a feasibility study to determine if, in fact, this makes sense for them. They will bring in an outside team of actuaries that will look at this from a strictly dollars and cents point of view. They will then present those figures to the town and it will be up to the town board to decide whether or not to proceed.

“Assuming that the town board votes to proceed, a committee will be formed with people from both the town and the fire department. We will look at all of the questions that we can think of regarding this. Once all of those questions have been answered, it will be up to the fire department to decide whether or not to continue with the process.

“All of this will take a good bit of time. I’m sure that the town would want this to start at the beginning of a fiscal year, so it looks like the absolute earliest this could happen would be July 1, 2020.”

Will there continue to be volunteers if the fire department becomes a town department? “Yes,” Wandrack said. “Kip is very much in favor of volunteers. It’s my understanding that the town already has volunteers in other positions and they are very keen on keeping ours.”

The question of pensions has been a knotty one for the fire department for years even as it has grown and prospered. It has 68 full-time paid fire fighters and nine part-time, as well as 50 volunteers who staff Station 5 (the Falls station) on weeknights and weekends. There are full crews round the clock at Stations 1, 2, 3, and 4 with an additional crew at Station 1 for the ladder truck.

The fire stations are Station 1 on Elm Avenue in downtown Wake Forest, Station 2 on Ligon Mill Road, Station 3 on Forestville Road and Station 4 on Jenkins Road. The department is contemplating a Station 6 on the rapidly-growing east side of Wake Forest, but Wandrack said they have not settled on a specific location.

The current request to be taken under the town’s wing is the reversal of an agreement in 1983 in which the Wake Forest Rural Fire Department, seeing that town annexations would steadily decrease its area and revenue, proposed providing fire protection for the town, ending the separate Wake Forest Fire Department. The two departments had almost matching stations on South White just north of the Elm Avenue intersection and shared the same rosters and equipment.

The merger took place after two years of discussion. The town and the rural department agreed to combine the fire departments with a board of directors with equal representation from both rural and town areas. The rural department incorporated itself as the Wake Forest Fire Department and soon built Station 1 on Elm Avenue.

The former rural station is now an antique shop while the next-door Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce building was renovated from the town’s station, which itself was a reworked gasoline station.

The merger also mean Wake Forest’s Station 2, manned by African-American fire fighters and in operation since 1942, was closed and its members added to the merged roster.

Wandrack said the current budget is $6.5 million with about $5.3 million, 82 percent, coming from the town and the remainder, $1.2 million or 18 percent, from Wake County. Currently, and since the fiscal 2014-2015 year, the town has allocated 11 cents of its 52-cent property tax rate for the fire department’s operations.

The department’s first fulltime paid fire chief, Jimmy Keith, was gaunt from the cancer that would soon take his life as he pleaded with the town commissioners in the spring of 2003 to add 2 cents in the next budget. The contract then was at 8 cents on a 52-cent tax rate and it was not a settled issue. Keith lost – the commissioners only added 1 cent for the fire department.

Since then, the fire department has received an increasing amount of funding because the allocated amount has risen from the 9 cents in fiscal 2003-2004 to the current 11 cents, added in fiscal 2014-2015 for the additional personnel needed for Station 4.  Meanwhile the property tax base has grown rapidly and now stands at $5.6 billion or more, increasing the real dollars for the department each year.

In addition, the fire impact fee on new residential and commercial buildings provided $2.8 million for Station 4 when it was built and opened in 2016.

Two years ago Wake County redesigned its funding for rural stations, raising the amount the Wake Forest Fire Department receives for its rural coverage from about 12 percent to 18 percent.