By Steve Browne
Valley City Times-Record

There was a meeting of the Valley City Rural Fire Department board on Wednesday morning to consider action on organizing a rural fire district of 14 Barnes County townships.
The rural fire department is feeling the pinch of increased costs of equipment and operations.
By law, a rural fire department gets 1.25 mills from the taxes paid to Barnes County by property owners. However, a rural fire district can directly levy 5 mills, which can be increased to 10 mills by a vote of the people, according to the North Dakota Century Code.
Board member Terry Brock, Green Township director, suggests considering another option, consolidation of all emergency services in Barnes County, including fire, ambulance, hazardous materials disposal, and rescue, manned by full-time professionals.
“We need to have a discussion,” Brock said. “I'm not saying this is the best way, but we need to explore the options.”
Brock said the advantage of consolidating emergency services is Barnes County already has an existing structure in place with a treasurer, independent auditor, state's attorney, workers compensation and retirement programs, and the necessary taxing authority.
“I'm not all that wild about setting up another bureaucracy,” Brock said. “This puts us all in the same boat and working together.”
Valley City Fire Chief Gary Retterath commented, “I suppose it should be looked at, but it doesn't happen hardly at all in North Dakota. The whole state has a problem with first responders and there are fewer fire departments now than 10 years ago. I'm kind of neutral because it hasn't been looked at.”
George Schlittenhardt,  secretary of the board, however, is not neutral.
“It can't work,” he said. “We don't have enough people to serve us. There's no place that I know of that's tried it. Do you realize there's 10,000 firemen in North Dakota and only four departments have full-time people: Bismarck, Minot, Grand Forks and Fargo?

For full story, see Wednesday's edition of the Valley City Times-Record.