By Karen Mahoney/Correspondent
Town of Salem and the Village of Silver Lake officials met Monday at the Salem Town Hall to reconsider ways to share services, beginning with fire and rescue.
The work session, initiated by Silver Lake was a second effort at talks of shared services between the two municipalities after attempts earlier this year failed.
Mike Slover, the Town of Salem Fire Chief told the group that the key to cooperative efforts is getting the public involved. One of the first steps of increasing community participation will be to increase communication to the public.
“Not everyone is going to be made happy, but allowing others to participate is important,” he said. “It is going to be a lot of work and will get heated at some points because each party will be protecting what they believe is theirs.”
No specific details were discussed at the meeting, which did not include public comments. Members of both boards, except Salem Supervisor Ted Kmiec and most of the Silver Lake Village Board members except Patrick Dunn and Mike Decker were present for the 45-minute session.
Salem Town Administrator, Patrick Casey explained that sharing of services made sense and is worth exploring it if could benefit taxpayers in both communities.
“With the expenses these days and costs of running a municipality, anything we can do to share services and the burden would be a benefit for the town and village and all of the residents,” he said. “Things are expensive and it is in the best interest not to duplicate equipment and materials.”
There was some confusion among Silver Lake officials in expressing what shared services they were interested in, as much of the initial efforts for this meeting were handled by the former Trustee Barbara Ironside.
Casey suggested that continuing with talks on shared fire and rescue services made the most sense, as that was the discussion at the last meeting. He suggested that Silver Lake officials gather data analysis on their fire and rescue departments and share the information with Salem.
“We would need you to look at fire calls for more than one year and rescue calls for three years and see what the calls are for,” he said.
“We would need this information to even consider an agreement and the raw data to support that. We also need a breakdown of your current commitment to other municipalities and fire and rescue and the revenue generated from that commitment. When we can get the data, we can look it over and see if bringing the two departments together would be a good marriage.”
Salem Town Chairman Diann Tesar agreed and added that both boards need to do their due diligence on the issue on behalf of the taxpayers.
“We need to take baby steps now,” she said, adding, “they have until March to decide, and when they know what they want, we can move deeper into it.”
The discussions earlier in the year were not financially advantageous to the Town of Salem, stated several Town officials. Salem also provides emergency services to Paddock Lake and the fairness between that arrangement and what was being proposed n Silver Lake was one concern.
“The agreement discussions worked out last time just wasn’t to our liking and it was primarily the dollar amount,” said Supervisor Dennis Faber. “Our citizens spend quite a lot here as well for our service and anything that could possibly benefit the community has big backing and Silver Lake doesn’t, but it might be something to consider.”
With a tight annual budget, Village President Sue Gerber and trustees Cyndy Schewebke, Soti Wilber and Paul Snellen agreed that the primary reason for exploring joint service agreements between the municipalities is that the current fire and rescue services are unsustainable.
“We see that it would advantageous to combine services without having to build new facilities, and it would offset costs for Salem too,” said Gerber. “To me, the biggest point is that you would get help from us and we would help you by not having to build that new facility.”
Casey agreed that Silver Lake has equipment and buildings that would be an asset to the town, but that they would need to see the buildings to do an asset evaluation.
“There is value in what you already have, which is recognizable, but there is also depreciation,” he said.
Casey also proposed that the eventual outcome of these discussions, if they came to fruition, would mean a single fire department with a single fire chief, which would most likely be Salem.
“Whatever you call it, it’s going to be one fire department with one chief,” he said.
The next joint meeting was set for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 10, at the Silver Lake Village Hall.