“Burning Down the House”

Study produced for Village of Waunakee proposing dramatic changes to the Waunakee Area Fire District.

Several months ago, the Waunakee Village Board authorized the retention of McMahon Public Safety and Municipal Management to conduct a study of the Waunakee Fire Department/District on the issues of staffing, operational effectiveness, funding, and governing structure.

The current Waunakee Area Fire District is nominally managed by a Fire District Board made up of 5 elected officials, two from Waunakee and three from Vienna, Springfield and Westport (one each). The current representatives on the Fire District are Robert McPherson and Nila Frye from Waunakee, John Cuccia (Westport), Matt Wright (Springfield), and Gary Endres (Vienna). The Fire District contracts with the Waunakee Fire Department (an independent volunteer-run organization) to provide firefighting and other services. Surprisingly, only one employee of the Fire Department is technically employed by the Fire District: Battalion Chief/Fire Inspector Brian Adler.

A brief review of meeting minutes and notes from the previous half decade suggests the Fire District Board, up until recently, has largely abrogated its authority over the Fire Department to the volunteer members of the Waunakee Fire Department, who have effectively run it themselves. By all available accounts, community satisfaction with the Fire Department is high and from a limited external view, the Department appears to be well-run and organized and is described by the report in no terms worse than “adequate”.

The Fire District is governed by an intergovernmental agreement between the four municipalities since the mid 1990s under which each community would pay a proportion of the Fire District’s costs based on equalized land values within each community served. Because of this agreement, which the municipalities entered into during a time in which Waunakee had a much lower population (and lower land values), the Village of Waunakee has, over the course of the last 30 years, grown to now paying over 70% of the Fire District’s costs while having no functional control over the district. Yes, you read that correctly: the adjacent communities hold voting control over Waunakee’s own fire district with their three votes to Waunakee’s two, all while paying less than 30% of its costs.

In an almost absurd outcome, Waunakee controls only 40% of the vote over the district, while paying 71% of the district’s expenses. In contrast, Springfield controls 20%, while paying 5.7% of district costs. Vienna pays only 0.97% of district costs, while maintaining 20% of the district’s voting control.

In summary, Waunakee provides over 70% of funding for Fire District, yet has no functional control over it short of the power to withdraw from the intergovernmental agreement and terminate the fire district (an effective nuclear option). Because of this delineation of control, there has been no functional oversight over the Fire Department by elected officials or any municipal employee in decades.

It is unclear why the Village allowed the Fire District to turn into a runaway train controlled (or ignored) by outside municipalities under former Village Presidents John Laubmeier and Chris Zellner. Under new Village President Kristin Runge, it appears outsider control over the Fire Department will come to a swift end.

Further, given the effective non-governmental status of the Fire Department as a volunteer organization, the Waunakee FD is largely not subject to open records laws or other methods of public oversight. For this and a variety of other reasons, the current structure of the district has been described by sources within the Village as non-viable long-term, and it may currently be outright illegal (or in non-compliance with various state statutes).

The McMahon report explicitly recommends a dramatic reorganization of the Fire District and the Fire Department itself to change this.

Particular recommendations of note:

1. Effectively re-organize the Fire District to confer no less than majority control to the Village of Waunakee.
2. Update the Intergovernmental Agreement to immediately create an independent Fire Commission to appoint the Fire Department’s Fire Chief (currently chosen by members) and to confirm appointment of officers and members (currently chosen by members).
3. Independently audit the Fire District through an independent accountant and present the findings to the Fire Board.
4. Make a variety of large scale changes to prepare the Fire District for eventual 24/7 staffed fire coverage, with a plan towards hiring an entire first shift staff by 2029 and full-time staffing and phase-out of the volunteer department by 2039.

Perhaps the most dire warning by the Report is contained deep in its analysis, noting:

An alternative, if additional board seats or supermajority voting cannot be achieved in the governance, is for the Village of Waunakee to leave the District and create a municipal fire department with the assets it obtains. The Village’s Fire Department could then contract with interested townships for service and ultimately have full control of the financial and operational issues in the fire department. (p 27, Final Report)

In such an event, the Village leaving the Fire District could prove financially catastrophic for Westport, Vienna and Springfield, as the termination of the agreement would mandate those municipalities to buy out their shares in the current fire district assets owned by Waunakee, and in turn then forced into buying fire protection services from Waunakee or other municipalities, such as Middleton or Madison.

The documents in their entirety are as available for download here: