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Consultant study and county review show steep volunteer decline, push for paid staffing
Summary
County staff and the fire commission told Rural Hall council that volunteer membership in the county fire system has fallen sharply, prompting recommendations to fund paid personnel systemwide; the county plans to share the consultant study with the town.
County staff said a consultant study and a year of meetings with chiefs and commissioners identified three central conclusions: (1) volunteer staffing has declined dramatically, (2) several small departments cannot provide reliable 24/7 coverage on volunteer labor alone, and (3) the existing rural tax district funding model cannot raise enough revenue to hire sufficient paid staff.
"We went from having over a thousand volunteers in the system to under 300 in the system," Kyle Haney said, repeating the study’s central data point. Haney said the county formed a fire commission and hired consultants to identify options; the final consultant report was being finalized and would be distributed to the council that day. Council members asked whether the report would be public; Haney said the final version would be provided and that some CAD‑based response‑time data had required revision before release.
Council and the fire chief discussed response times and geographic disparities: Haney noted that, in parts of the northern county, 90th‑percentile response times were around 20 minutes, and Chief Brock Smith stressed the local value of Rural Hall’s apparatus for EMS and mutual aid.
