County VFDs take exception to commission's plan for state fire dollars

Oct. 16—MORGANTOWN — To quote a Paul Newman classic, 'What we've got here is failure to communicate.'

At least, that's certainly how it appears.

Monongalia County Volunteer Fire Association President Mickey Rhinehart appeared at Wednesday's Monongalia County Commission meeting to call last week's commission decision on the distribution of some $500, 000 in state support for fire departments "a slap in the face to the association."

Rhinehart said the association wasn't aware the commission had made any decisions regarding the funds until he received a call for last week's The Dominion Post report on the issue.

He said the firefighters had been asked by the commission to submit a distribution plan, which they did on Sept. 30, but had yet to receive feedback.

"That's pretty much when we found out the commission created its own plan. It made the committee we had set up and the association feel like including us had been an empty gesture, " Rhinehart told The Dominion Post. "If this is what you wanted to do, why not just do it instead of wasting our time and effort."

The funds in question are the result of two fire department funding sources created during the 2023 special session of the West Virginia Legislature.

The first, the All-County Fire Protection Fund, is divided among the counties by population. Monongalia County received $180, 607.79 through this fund in 2023 and $182, 565.56 in 2024.

The second, the County Fire Protection Fund, is divided among counties that have countywide fire levies or countywide fire fees in place. Monongalia County has a fire excess levy and received $209, 749.13 through this fund in 2023. It has yet to receive a 2024 disbursement.

Based on the distribution method approved by the commission last week, all 12 volunteer departments and the Morgantown Fire Department will receive an equal split after a percentage — 10 % of the dollars received in 2023 and 5 % of the dollars received in 2024 and beyond — are held in reserve as a contingency fund.

Rhinehart said the plan put forward by the volunteer association would have simply split this initial distribution evenly among the 12 volunteer departments with the understanding that the inclusion of the Morgantown Fire Department as well as the creation of a contingency fund would be taken up for future disbursements.

"It was never really conveyed to us that they were going to include the city with the other 12 departments. There were questions we had about that. There were questions we had about the contingency fund and how that would work, " Rhinehart said. "But we submitted our proposal and we didn't really hear anything, and the next thing you know it's on the docket."

Which gets back to communication.

"We have a commissioner assigned to be a liaison with us. We've not seen that commissioner in well over a year ; since he was reelected, " Rhinehart said. "We feel that some of this stuff would have been taken care of if any of the three commissioners came to a meeting even occasionally. I know we could have hashed this out better and the feelings wouldn't be what they are now."

As for the commissioners, they say the decision to include the city wasn't really theirs to make once the city asked to be included.

Commission President Sean Sikora said the intent of the legislation may have been to fund volunteer fire departments, but the word "volunteer " was stricken from the language that was passed into law.

"That was specifically taken out of the law. What they want us to do is ignore that. We can't do that. We can't base our decision off the intent of legislators, " he said, explaining Morgantown will be included in the distribution of these funds just as the volunteer association chose to include Morgantown in the distribution of excess levy funds when the levy was renewed this past May.

As for the contingency fund, Sikora said those funding requests will be made to the volunteer fire companies association before they come to the commission.

"We talked about how we would access those dollars and I said, 'The plan is to involve you guys to vet the requests so you're part of that discussion.' So, I don't know what they want different, he said."

According to Rhinehart, the volunteers plan to seek legal representation to help answer their questions regarding the legislation.