Three-year Fire Service Contract Completed
Advisory Board To Be Formed To Review Area's Fire Protection Issues
By Paul Gingras

The Mackinaw Township Board of Trustees will sign a threeyear contract for fire service with the Village of Mackinaw City and nearby Wawatam Township, ending two years of negotiations with the village. The decision, made at its Tuesday, May 20 meeting, came five days after the village council sent a letter declaring that it would discontinue fire department services to the portion of Mackinaw Township lying outside the village borders, unless the municipality signed the contract by June 1.

The village comprises portions of Wawatam and Mackinaw townships, which are protected by the village fire department.

The village has provided fire services for township areas lying outside its limits for decades, but has lacked an appropriate formula to pay for it, Village Manager Jeff Lawson told The St. Ignace News.

Residents urged the Mackinaw Township board to sign the contract, owing to concerns over the loss of fire protection and the potential for residential fire insurance rates to rise if the township board chose to contract with another fire department farther away.

Trustees assured residents that they had no intention of allowing fire service to lapse, however, they are now faced with finding a new way to pay for it. Under the new agreement, fire service for Mackinaw Township will cost approximately twice what it paid last year, or about $30,000 for 2008.

The municipality can cover its obligation this year, but must find a new way to cover fire costs for 2009 and beyond, Mackinaw Township Treasurer Bonnie Bertchinger said.

Rather than paying the full cost for fire service from the general fund, the board is considering a fire millage or an ordinance that would allow it to bill insurance companies for fires and accidents to which the Mackinaw City Fire Department responds. Billing insurance companies is done by townships throughout the state to recoup fire and rescue costs, however, the village will not release the records the township needs to do the billing, Ms. Bertchinger said.

Former Mackinaw City council president Robert Heilman, who was present at the meeting, said it is dangerous for the village to release personal records, owing to federal medical privacy laws designed to prevent improper sharing of personal information.

Not complying with such laws "could well create some fatal federal lawsuits for the village," he said.

Mr. Heilman and Mackinaw Township attorney Tim MacArthur urged the board to convene a fire advisory board, which is called for under the contract, as soon as possible. The advisory board will have no control over the fire department, but it may be the appropriate entity through which records for people involved in fires and accidents can be obtained, enabling the board to bill insurance companies, they said.

The township had no choice but to sign the contract, noted township clerk Jack Keck, adding that the municipality will hold a public hearing to determine if contracting with Mackinaw City is what township residents believe the board should be doing.

Wawatam Township recently signed the fire contract. Last month, Mackinaw Township rejected it and proposed an alternative one-year, two-party contract that fell short of what the village expected the municipality to contribute by about $10,000. The village did not accept the alternative contract.

Mackinaw City's contract is based on a weighted formula that determines costs for each municipality by population, property values, and the average number of fire runs in each area.

"This formula is an established, frequently-utilized system to determine fire costs between municipalities throughout Michigan and the United States...The Village believes this distribution rationale is fair and allows each unit to provide cost efficient fire service," Mr. Lawson wrote in a letter to the Mackinaw Township board.

The village chose the weighted contract because there are differences in population, property values, and fire runs in Wawatam and Mackinaw townships, Mr. Lawson told the village council at its May 15 meeting.

The village pays the bulk of fire costs because it has higher population, higher taxable value, and more run volume, he said.

The fire run portion of the contract concerns Mackinaw Township, said Township Supervisor Barry Dean. Addressing the council May 15, Mr. Dean suggested that the village government may not fully understand the implications of the weighted formula for his municipality.

"Every single time 911 calls and they send somebody out into that area of the township, for road assistance or anything, it is part of the weighted formula," Mr. Dean said. "Stop and think that through Mackinaw Township, outside of the village, are two of the major high- ways coming into this town...Every time something happens [on I-75 or US-23] where you have to send your first responder group or fire truck out....you count it against us for the cost of it."

Wawatam Township has no major highways running through it, keeping its costs under the weighted formula much lower, he added.

Mr. MacArthur said he has several concerns with the contract, notably the lack of formal definitions for components such as fire runs.

Normally, definitions are included in such contracts. He also said he favored a different form of fire board, an administrative fire board with more authority that would be in control of budgeting and planning for the department. Several area municipalities have such boards, he said.

The municipalities involved can control the fire board financially.

To create the contract, the village and Mackinaw Township used the services of Dr. Lynn Harvey, a specialist in creating such contracts.

Before the vote Tuesday, Mr. Dean said his municipality never agreed to the weighted formula.

"We looked at the weighted formula only with the idea of assessing [its] value against other options," he said.

Creating a fire district that includes both townships and the village, which would float a millage across all three municipalities to share costs evenly, would be the best way to pay for fire service, Mr. Dean said.

Mackinaw City's contract calls for each entity to pay approximately the following amounts for fire service in 2008: Mackinaw City $96,000, Mackinaw Township, $30,000, Wawatam Township, $15,000.