Elizabeth Regan
The Day, New London, Conn.
(TNS)
Sep. 5—EAST LYME — First Selectman Dan Cunningham on Wednesday announced the permanent appointment of the acting East Lyme Fire Service chief and deputy chief as efforts to formalize the new department continue.
Cunningham informed members of the Board of Selectmen of the appointments at their regular meeting.
“Earlier today, Chief Bill Bundy and Deputy Chief Erik Quinn had been serving in acting capacities, and I changed that,” he said.
Cunningham in February shifted oversight of the town’s paid firefighters to Bundy and Quinn as the interim leaders of the evolving Fire Service department, which was established in the current budget for $308,755.
The move officially puts the town’s two independent volunteer fire companies, 11 full-time firefighters and five part-time firefighters under the supervision of Bundy and Quinn.
The volunteer Flanders Fire Department and Niantic Fire Department, as well as East Lyme Ambulance, operate separately from each other and the town.
Bundy, a retired Connecticut State Police sergeant who previously served as fire marshal and emergency management director in Montville, told selectmen he has led the state police Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit, taught at the Connecticut Fire Academy and been internationally certified as an arson investigator.
He said the new department has been working with volunteers from the two independent fire departments to establish standard operating procedures and to address gaps in equipment and vehicle maintenance.
The idea of changing the volunteer structure going back 100 years in Niantic and 67 years in Flanders has been controversial. And it is not a unique problem. Tensions between volunteers, paid firefighters and town leaders has been evident across the region amid a push for professionalism in communities long reliant on volunteers.
Quinn on Thursday said there are currently six active volunteers in the Niantic Fire Department and five in the Flanders department. While he serves as the volunteer chief of the Niantic department, he said he compiled the figures in his capacity as the deputy chief of the Fire Service.
The number of volunteers has been on a decline over the last 15 years, according to Quinn.
“It’s finally at a tipping point where so many volunteers have been leaving and we haven’t been able to recruit any more, so the numbers have been dropping,” he said. “Before we’re at a critical level where we have zero volunteers, we need to have plans in place so we can respond in emergencies.”
Quinn said conventional wisdom puts the number of firefighters needed to put out a fire in a small building at 10. With four or five paid firefighters on duty during the day, the town relies upon volunteers to make up the difference.
Efforts to bolster volunteer recruitment efforts include advertising on the Fire Service’s Facebook page and working with East Lyme High School to expand a new emergency medical certification program to include classes on firefighting, he said.
A lifetime commitment
Cunningham on Thursday acknowledged a document codifying the relationship between the new municipal department and the volunteer companies does not yet exist.
He referenced an attempt by previous First Selectman Kevin Seery to draft an ordinance laying out the roles and responsibilities of a centralized East Lyme Fire Department that was roundly rejected by volunteers and abruptly pulled by Seery.
Seery’s draft ordinance would have allowed a paid fire chief to enter into contracts with the volunteer fire companies and the ambulance service to augment the services of the paid staff. It also specified that the chief would be empowered to designate assistants to help manage staff and volunteers at the scene of a fire, but it did not say what would happen to the existing position of volunteer chief within the independent companies.
Cunningham described the draft as an attempt to “connect the dots” that didn’t really work.
He said his approach instead was to hire the chief and deputy chief using the authority granted to him in the town charter, and then to work out the structural details.
“My thought was we’ve got to have all the pieces in place, and then maybe we can come up with a document that sets forth what the relationships are between Flanders, Niantic, the paid firefighters and ultimately the ambulance association,” he said.
He cited language in the labor contract signed last month with the paid firefighters’ union that “helps establish what the department is.”
Cunningham also called for an addition to the town ordinances establishing a fire commission.
He has likened a fire commission to the Board of Police Commissioners, which has oversight of hiring, firing and discipline of all officers in town.
“In the future, it wouldn’t be the first selectman hiring and firing,” he said. “It would be the commission.”
The town charter empowers the first selectman to hire and dismiss employees as long as he gives notice to the Board of Selectmen after he does so. The board can overrule any hire by a majority vote at the following meeting.
Selectwoman Rose Ann Hardy on Thursday was supportive of the appointment of Bundy and Quinn as part of the effort to streamline the way fire services are delivered in town, whether by paid staff members or volunteers.
“The intent is to get them all under one umbrella and make a good, strong, unified force,” she said.
But she described the restructuring as “kind of a shock” to a community with a long, proud history of volunteerism.
The former social studies teacher recalled middle school students like William Rix running out of her class to fight fires back in the late 1960s.
Rix would go on to become a chief of the Flanders Fire Department and a lifetime member.
“For them, it’s truly been a lifetime commitment,” she said.
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