The Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors met with the county’s seven fire chiefs May 14 just prior to the board’s regular May meeting to discuss potential increases in county donations to the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) side of Meherrin Volunteer Fire & Rescue and to the fire and EMS sides of Hampden-Sydney Volunteer Fire Department.

Farmville 701 District Supervisor and Board Chairman Jim Wilck said he thought it was a productive meeting.

“We have not taken a vote on it yet, but I thought it was very informative, and it was interesting to listen to the different opinions of the fire chiefs,” he said. “Some fire chiefs were saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a budget, and we live by the budget.’ And the Hampden-Sydney guy was saying, ‘Yeah, but we have a turnover of people because 90 percent of our people are students.’”

This turnover leads to the need for more frequent training of new volunteers, which costs more money.

Regarding a vote by the board on the matter, Wilck initially said it could happen during the board’s regular June meeting, June 11, or even before that, but then he clarified that he was uncertain of the timetable. However, he noted that when the vote happens, the financial element should not be complicated.

“I really don’t know when we’ll vote on it,” he said. “The situation is the money is basically in the budget, or if it’s not in the budget, we have an excess this year, and so the money is there. We’ll just have to decide. It’s not like we’ll have to come up with more money or something, from that standpoint.”

Wilck mentioned that a new request to the county came out of the meeting of the chiefs relating to the possibility of all the departments receiving funding increases next year.

“One thing they did ask for — and I have the power to do this as far as setting up committees — but they asked for us to set up a committee to look into it for next year, because everybody’s expenses are going up,” Wilck said. “One of them mentioned that he had $3,000 in the bank to last till July. And someone else said, ‘Yeah, well, we only have $2,500,’ so basically all of them feel they need more money, and that’s a good possibility, and so we’re going to set up a committee and talk about it in advance as opposed to having them come in at the last minute and say something.”

The seven fire departments in Prince Edward County include Farmville Fire Department, Hampden-Sydney Volunteer Fire Department, Meherrin Volunteer Fire & Rescue, Prospect Volunteer Fire Department, Pamplin Volunteer Fire Department, Darlington Heights Volunteer Fire Department and Rice Volunteer Fire Department.

In a previous report by The Herald, Hampden-Sydney Chief L.W. Gilliam cited a trio of reasons for why his department was requesting an increase in funds, speaking first about its volunteer base.

“We do have about 90 percent student base,” he said. “We also rely on local people, but unfortunately we don’t have as many local people as we do students, so we’re still 90 percent students, 10 percent local members. That being said, we do have high turnover rate every year because we have seniors graduate, and we take in new people, and our training costs are high. But also the equipment maintenance and the cost of operating a fire department has gone up tremendously.”

“That and also our call volume,” he continued. “Our call volume has skyrocketed in the last few years. So it’s not just the fact that we have so much turnover of people. We kind of have three different things going on at one time that it’s just time to ask for an increase.”

Getting specific on the call volume for his department, he said that from last year to this year, it has increased more than 81 percent.

Call volume was also a reason cited by Meherrin Fire Chief Trey Pyle in a previous report for why his department was asking for more funds. He said the Meherrin request for additional funds is a two-part request.

“The first request was just for an additional $5,000 in operational money,” he said. “Basically that’s just due to increase in call volume. It’s pretty cut and dry. Our call volume … I believe it’s like 78 percent increase over last year.”

The second part of the request is to start what Pyle is calling a vehicle acquisition fund, which could be a completely new budget line item. Pyle said the request is for $12,000 annually for the vehicle acquisition fund, money which he said would stay with the county until the department signed a contract.