THE SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY (VIRGINIA) FIRE AND RESCUE DEPARTMENT is a combination department undergoing a steady transition from an all-volunteer organization. Located 50 miles south of Washington, D. C., the county is rapidly transforming from a rural, farming community to a classic exurb. Along with that comes the greater demand for more fire and ambulance services creating a need for additional stations and the replacement of older firehouses.
It is not unusual for volunteer firehouses to have permanent sleepers, usually young men and older teenagers, but more rare is the case of a department having permanent residents. Spotsylvania had some of those …… until Friday. Now, they’re history.
The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star has an article about the situation that starts with:
On a recent Wednesday morning about 11 a.m., volunteers were sleeping in six of the eight bunk beds at Company 1, the new fire and rescue station in the Spotsylvania Courthouse area.
One was a woman who appeared to be in her 20s. The air conditioner was set at a chilly 60 degrees.
Clothes littered one of the top bunk beds, and a blue Spotsylvania Volunteer Fire Department uniform was the only hung-up piece of clothing in the room, which resembled a college dorm.
The volunteer department calls them “live-ins.” But now Spotsylvania County officials are telling them to get out.
Officials could not provide a clear number of how many volunteers were staying in the stations. Among those affected, however, were a married couple who had been staying at the Thornburg station for an unknown period of time.
The couple collected more than $8,500 last year as part of the volunteer per diem pay program. They declined to discuss living arrangements with a reporter on Friday.
Thornburg Fire Station, Co. 8
(SVFD photo)
The volunteer fire department regulations had stated that volunteers could be in a station as long as they wanted if they were assigned to an apparatus and actively running calls. But a lack of oversight apparently led to some volunteers taking advantage of the program.
On Thursday, following their learning that the newspaper was doing a story on the “free housing” policy, the volunteer fire chief met with the county administrator and adopted a new policy, effective immediately, that forbids any volunteer from using a firehouse as a primary residence and requires all to vacate the bunk rooms by 10 am each day.
This is not the first time that the Spotsylvania volunteers have attempted to take advantage of the taxpayers’ hospitality. The aforementioned per diem payments was structured as an incentive to encourage more active participation by the volunteers, but it was found that a few were gaming the system and utilizing it as a part-time job, taking home many thousands of dollars per year.
The disbursement to the volunteer companies was intended to be used as a means to improve the VFD’s equipment and programs, and to be used as the occasional cash incentive. But a few of the stations were divvying up the funds and paying members outright for putting in duty time. One gamer was living 30 miles away in another county and driving past three volunteer firehouses on his way to Spotsylvania to cash in. This put the county in the unwanted position of being responsible for paying workmen’s compensation insurance and withholding social security obligations for people who had never been hired, but had become de facto part-time employees.
Read the Free Lance-Star article in full HERE.
Free Lance-Star story from last December 28 describing the per diem mess and how it came about HERE.
Spotsylvania County Fire and Rescue Dept. (government agency) WEBSITE.
Spotsylvania Volunteer FD WEBSITE.
