A volunteer fire department is declining its contract with Smith County ESD2, here’s why

SMITH COUNTY, Texas ( KETK ) — The Troup Volunteer Fire Department declined to renew their contract with Smith County Emergency Service District 2 (ESD2) after claiming expectations are too high.

ESD2 was created by 11 volunteer fire stations in Smith County back in 2007 to help cover Smith county volunteer stations that were not fully staffed. Now, Chief Dustin Rust of the Troup Volunteer Fire Department said the expectation by the ESD are dwindling their man power from 30 to 5 volunteers.

“We’re a volunteer department, anything we can do to help the citizens is great, but when my numbers start falling and I can’t do my job and I can’t guarantee our level of service to people, it’s time to make a change somewhere,” Troup Volunteer Fire Department Chief Dustin Rust said.

Though Troup is situated between Smith and Cherokee county, Troup VFD’s decline to recontract with the ESD will allow them to only serve Cherokee county. Now, ESD2’s Troup station off Wilkinson Street will be handling all calls in the community and claim response time will not be a problem.

“Nothing has changed in that meaning that we already had a staff station there. We are staffing the engine company there. We also keep firefighters there 24/7, so there is some level of staffing there,” said Chief Eric Greaser, Emergency Service District 2.

Greaser said the ESD provides volunteer stations with necessities otherwise hard to obtain without funding.

“We provide for trucks maintenance, we provide electricity, insurance, we provide training that that they that they get uniforms, everything that goes into those radios, pagers, all that it takes to get a volunteer on a response. It is true that they can get some grant funding out there and when available they get that,” Greaser said.

However, Rust said the contract requires his crews to respond to a set percentage of calls, maintain staff and keep up with certifications. These expectations can often prove to be hard for volunteers who have other work commitments.

Rust explained that his firefighters are trained and certified, but the other trainings are not feasible.

“A minuscule thing, administrative thing such as email, phishing, scam tests or something like that. If they don’t complete those then they are either terminated from the ESD or they’re reprimanded or they lose access to the station and they can’t respond to anything,” Rust said.

In response, Greaser said the county has raised the standard and claims it to be managable.

“We want to make sure that our citizens are served with adequately trained people that are responding to their calls, so those volunteer firefighters have to be trained to a certain level to be eligible to make those response,” Greaser said.

Four other volunteer fire departments, Chapel Hill, Whitehouse, Flint and Winona, have yet to renew their contract and hope to come to an agreement after the 90-day negotiation period.

Troup VFD hopes to work out their differences with ESD2 and work together in the future.

“We’re not walking away from Smith County ESD, [we are] just kind of taking a break and reorganizing ourselves, get back together, and then if we can work something out in the future, we are absolutely open coming back,” Rust said.

Within the past few days, the new volunteer fire department responding in Cherokee county has quickly moved from 5 volunteers to 26 and counting.

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