By KEVIN NEVERS

To meet 50 percent of the emergency response standard recommended by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the Chesterton Fire Department would need to hire a minimum of 24 new career firefighters and build another fire station.

To meet 90 percent of that standard, the CFD would need to hire 51 new career firefighters and build two more stations.

So Deputy Fire Chief Mike Orlich told the Chesterton Town Council at a special meeting Monday night, as he presented the findings and recommendations of the 2007 Service Evaluation for the CFD, a document in the making for 18 months and possibly the first such document ever compiled by the CFD.

Currently the CFD employs 12 career firefighters: a chief, a deputy chief, three shift officers, and seven firefighters. Twenty-four additional career firefighters would represent a 200 percent increase in its staffing level and—at an estimated cost of $55,000 per firefighter, according to the fiscal plan prepared for the annexation of the old Olson Farm property—would cost the town a total of $1,210,000 annually in additional payroll.

At the moment the Chesterton Police Department, just to take an example, has an authorized strength of 21 officers.

Orlich suggested no time line for hiring any additional career firefighters and after the meeting emphasized that the Service Evaluation is merely a “tool” to give the Town Council some indication of the needs of the CFD in the future.

Still, as Orlich told the council, the Town of Chesterton is growing both in terms of area and population. Take the former. In 1980 the town comprised a total of 4.9 square miles; in 1994, 6.7 square miles; in 2004, 8.9 square miles; and today, 9.2 square miles.

Meanwhile, Chesterton’s population has swelled, from 8,531 in 1980, to 9,124 in 1990, to 10,488 in 2000, to an estimated 12,456 in 2007.

Between 1980 and ‘89, Orlich continued, only 195 single-family homes were built and 104 commercial buildings; between 1990 and ‘99, however, 940 single-family homes were built and 106 commercial buildings; and between 2000 and ‘06, 915 single-family homes were built and 53 commercial buildings. Currently a number of significant planned unit developments are on tap: Sand Creek Farms east of Friday Road, Coffee Creek Crossing south of the Indiana Toll Road, and Springdale in Crocker.

The result of such growth, Capt. Tom Fieffer told the council, is a gradual increase in response times throughout town. Thus in 2006, the CFD met the NFPA recommended response time only 46 percent of the time, while in 2007 it met that recommendation only 44 percent of the time.

Fieffer acknowledged that the hiring of any new career firefighters—much less 24—would be costly, as would the construction of a new station and the purchase of new vehicles to equip that station, but ventured a few ways and means to underwrite the additional expense. The council could use tax increment financing moneys to fund a building project and Cumulative Capital Development to fund vehicle acquisition.

And it could secure an excess levy from the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance to fund the hiring of new career firefighters.

(Indeed, Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann noted later in the special meeting that the 2007 Service Evaluation prepared by the CFD would be a “keystone” in its filing later this year of an excess levy appeal.)

Fieffer hazarded another idea as well: the establishment of the Town of Chesterton’s own ambulance service, for which the CFD would bill patients. “We’ve got our roots in town,” he said. “We’ve got a stake in town. We want to take care of our own. And we could care for our own better.”

Finally, Fieffer suggested the creation of a “fire territory” incorporating the Town of Chesterton and unincorporated Westchester Township. “The advantage,” he said, “is that everyone pays the same rate for the same service.”

Members took the 2007 Service Evaluation under advisement.

Posted 4/15/2008