A hearing on a petition to form the Shoal Creek Fire Protection District will be held at 2 p.m. on Dec. 7 at the Caldwell County Courthouse at Kingston.
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The petition was filed in the Circuit Court of Caldwell County for the formation of a fire protection district. The new fire district will cover land in five counties, Daviess, Caldwell, Ray, Carroll and Livingston.
The petition is being initiated by the Braymer Volunteer Fire & Rescue, according to Braymer Fire Chief Farrel Clevenger. Clevenger has been the fire chief at Braymer for five years.
Chief Clevenger said a need for more revenue is the main reason the Braymer Fire Department is wanting to form a fire district.
Currently, Braymer Fire collects money through dues. The dues are $65 per year and the fire district collects from 310 paying members, which is 78% of the total membership. The money collected from the dues is not covering the cost of maintenance, updating equipment or vehicles, which include engines, grass/brush trucks, tankers, and rescue units.
The new district would become a political subdivision and be tax based.
Mr. Clevenger said the Braymer fire equipment is aging. The newest truck is a 1986 IHC pumper.
There are 21 members of the all-volunteer fire department at Braymer.
“The aging equipment creates safety issues for the volunteers,” Mr. Clevenger said. “The way we are doing things now, the funding is not available to upgrade. By becoming a tax-based district we will be able to get funding to provide better, safer equipment for the safety of our volunteer fire fighters and our first responders.”
Braymer Volunteer Fire & Rescue provides fire suppression and emergency medical services to the community around Braymer — serving Caldwell, Ray, Carroll, and Livingston Counties. Braymer has a mutual agreement with surrounding fire departments and discussed forming the fire district with those departments. Breckenridge Fire Department was agreeable to the idea, which allowed the inclusion of Daviess County.
However, the boundaries of the petition as they appear in the newspaper under Public Notices are not accurate. The northern boundary of the proposed Shoal Creek Fire District overlaps into the southern boundary of the Lock Springs Fire District.
Mr. Clevenger said it was an unintentional error and he has talked with the Lock Springs Fire District and the petition will be amended at the Dec. 7 hearing.
“The new district takes in the people we already protect in Braymer/Breckenridge,” Chief Clevenger said. “We’re not trying to take anything more than we can protect. It’s pretty much the boundaries we have now.”
The court will determine whether the issue can be taken before the voters during the April elections next year.
The court will need to declare the district organized, define the boundaries, and give it a corporate name. The decree of incorporation will not become final and conclusive until it has been submitted to an election of the voters residing within the boundaries described, and until it has been assented to by a majority vote.