After much back and forth, Wilton voters supported creating and funding a full-time fire chief position during Town Meeting on Thursday night.
Voters passed all but one warrant article Thursday, most by sweeping majorities, including the $5,063,388 budget, but Article 21, to raise $50,000 for a partial year’s salary and benefits to hire a full-time fire chief was one of the most contentious of the night.
Current Interim Fire Chief Don Nourse spoke to the crowd about the need for the position, detailing the struggles the department has in staffing daytime hours when most calls come in. A full-time position would allow the fire department to respond to administrative work, such as fire inspections and burn permits, which it struggles to keep up with now, as well as less direct benefits, such as more time to do recruitment work to try to rebuild the department, which is down 13 members from a full roster.
While the warrant article only requested $50,000, that represents pay and benefits for a portion of the year. Nourse said the starting pay for the town’s emergency service chiefs, such as the ambulance and police, is $64,000, and the additional benefits and retirement payments could mean an addition of up to $110,000 for the position moving forward.
Budget Committee Chair Carey Hughes offered an amendment to raise the stipend for the fire chief to $20,000 for the year (the current stipend is $15,000) and create a study committee to look at whether the town has need of a fire chief.
Resident Tom Schultz told voters he had sat on similar committees to discuss the need for a full-time ambulance chief and a full-time town administrator, and said he was confident a study committee would find the need for a full-time fire chief, as it had with the other two positions. A study committee would only put off the hiring for a year.
Voters took to the ballot box for the amendment, but ultimately turned it down, and supported the original article 62-51, creating the fire department’s first full-time position.
Other warrant articles affecting the fire department, including $15,000 for high-band radios, $50,000 to repair out-of-service water holes and $240,000 for air packs, sailed through without discussion.
The other article which drew the most discussion was an article to allow the town to negotiate and enter into a lease agreement with the Quinn Brothers Corp., to continue leasing the company land for a gravel operation. The town has been leasing the land to the company since 2004, and though the lease is up, Quinn Brothers is interested in continuing the lease for up to another 15 years. The town has been working with the Quinns on a deal which would include receiving a second piece of property owned by the Quinns, which is located over the town’s aquifer and is near its wells.
The town has asked for an extension of the lease with the Quinns for the past two years, attempting to close the deal, and asked for another extension Thursday, but voters weren’t amenable to continuing the deal, ultimately defeating it in a voice vote, the only warrant article of the evening to be defeated.
Town infrastructure was featured on several different warrant articles this year, all of which saw support from voters. Voters approved using capital reserve funds to contribute $150,000 to the repair and replacement of the Stagecoach Road Bridge, as well as adding $350,000 to the capital reserve to address the town’s three other bridges in need of repair and replacement in the future.
Voters also prepared for the upcoming replacement of the town highway garage. They approved a $10,2775 article to prepare a study for the needs of a future highway garage and raised $64,725 for its eventual construction. They also approved using $120,000 from capital reserves to replace the town’s 1984 sidewalk tractor and plow, and to use $30,000 to purchase crushed stone to do repair work on about one-third of the town’s dirt roads.
The voters also approved the continuation of leases for the town’s police cruiser and highway dump truck.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.