Good morning Madison County Fiscal court. My name is Elliott Stoddard and I am here representing The Red Lick Volunteer Fire Department, a 501(c)(3) charitable corporation. My role is the department Treasurer and a firefighter.

Bottom Line Up Front

Madison County granted $20 thousand dollars to Red Lick Volunteer Fire Department last fiscal year. With a small budget of less than $50 thousand dollars, we rely heavily on grants like yours to sustain our operations. The rest of the department income was from a state grant and fundraising.

Thank you very much for the grant. Without it Red Lick Volunteer Fire Department could not operate. The grant money is used to deliver a high level of professional emergency services, at a volunteer price.

Fire District

The Red Lick Fire District is a small district, covering less than 1 thousand 8 hundred addresses. But we provide essential services to the people and business here.

As you know, our district is in South East Madison County. It runs approximately from the Blue Grass Army Depot in the North to the county line in the South and 421 in the West to the county line in the East. It borders on Estill, Jackson, and Rockcastle counties.

Mutual Aid

Mutual aid is so important for small departments like ours. We work closely with the departments in surrounding counties. Especially providing tanker support and fighting grass and wildland fires. Red Lick volunteers work even closer with the Blue Grass Army Depot fire department, Berea Fire Department and Berea Volunteers. Our closest relationship is with Madison County Fire department which is dispatched to every call in our fire district.

I have never seen departments work so well together and so often. Madison County has an incredible system of mutual aid between fire departments that is seldom seen. One reason it works so well is the unified dispatch and radio system.

Radio System

The importance of the unified county radio system cannot be overstated. In an emergency seconds count. That is a huge reason why fire departments in Madison County work so well together.

Response Types

Red Lick VFD provides emergency services for fires of all types including structure fires, automobile fires, hay fires, grass fires, and wildland fires. We also provide services for car and farm accident extraction. Red Lick VFD is known for several successful search and rescue operations.

Number of Calls

Last year the Red Lick Volunteers were dispatched to 98 calls. Those calls were not only in our district, but were in Berea, Richmond, Waco, Whitehall, Estill County, and Rockcastle County. A majority of the calls were for traffic accidents. 51 were for various fire responses.

This year so far there have been 131 calls dispatched to Red Lick volunteers. We responded outside the district to emergencies in Berea, Estill County and Jackson County. And 78 were for various fire responses. This is a lot of calls for a small fire district with a small fire department.

This included three structure fires in a 48 hour period. Another two structure fires days apart in February resulted in two homes saved.

Coverage

Our volunteers are on call 24/7. They live and work throughout the fire district. There is a good chance that one of us is close to an emergency call when it happens. That allows us to get someone on scene quickly to report the urgency of the situation by radio. The first person on scene with a fire department radio can tell dispatch what tools, skills, and manpower are needed. Because of this, before we put on our gear we are a valuable resource for the community.

Professionalism

Half of our 30 members are professional firefighters and/or EMS personnel. They’re the ones who show up on their time off to do a job that they love.

For a rural area this professionalism is important to community safety. It’s like getting free overtime from the firefighters. There is no way that the county could afford to hire people to replace them. If the county were to pay just 5 professionals to work, that would cost the county over $1.8 million dollars per year. The professional volunteers bring a level of expertise and dedication that couldn’t be provide without them.

The non-professional volunteers benefit greatly from the professionals knowledge and expertise. Their training and leadership is incredibly valuable and leads to a better emergency response and a lower rate of injuries on scene. I have never worked with such a professional volunteer department in my 36 years of being a volunteer fireman.

Their skills and efforts are not the only things we cherish. They have important contacts with other fire departments. When we need to clean our turnout gear we go to the fire department at the Blue Grass Army Depot. That is because several of our members are professional firefighters with the Blue Grass Army Depot. Including Chief Adams who is an assistant chief at BGAD.

When we need new airpacks, Lexington Fire Department donates their old ones. That is because our Assistant Chief Chad Furrow and several other members are professional firefighters with Lexington Fire Department.

These contacts and resources save Red Lick Volunteer Fire Department tens of thousands of dollars each year. None of that would happen without our professional volunteers and their contacts.

Having professional firefighters on our team earns respect from the paid firefighters that we work with. Our team’s strength comes from the blend of experienced professionals and dedicated volunteers, a combination particularly vital in our rural community where quick, effective response times are critical to life and property safety.

Junior Firefighters

Red Lick volunteers are not just protecting lives and property today. We are building a legacy of firefighting for years to come by training young people in our community to follow in our footsteps. This is important to keeping the department running. Because one of the most common reasons for volunteer departments to close is a lack of volunteers.

Our junior firefighters and young firefighters are far more likely to serve there communities as professional firefighters. Right now there are paid firefighters that volunteered with us before being hired in local departments. Red Lick volunteers now work with Madison County, Berea, BGAD, and Lexington fire departments. Training young people to become firefighters is the best thing we can do to insure the future of life and property safety in Madison County.

Vehicles

Red Lick has three response vehicles, a fire engine, a tanker, and a brush truck. All three are 1998 models. While they are older than some of our firefighters, the volunteers of Red Lick have worked hard to keep them running. A few years ago the members rebuilt the rear axle of Brush 11. Engine 11 was running slow and the guys flushed the fuel system and rebuilt it. Now Engine 11 is back to it’s former speed. Both jobs were messy hard work. But the volunteers know that we don’t have much money to spend on repairs.

The vehicles are a great mix for the district. Out engine is small enough to get into driveways and up hills that the larger engines can’t get to. Several times we have been able to fight fires that other departments just could not get to.

Income

The main subject of my presentation is the budget of Red Lick Volunteer Fire Department. The department has a small budget of less than $50 thousand dollars a year. As a comparison the average personal salary in Madison County is about $65 thousand dollars per year. Last year the Madison County grant made up 41% of the departments income. The rest of the income was a state grant and fundraising. One of our fundraising activities is road litter cleanup. We clean 8 miles of roadway in our district, including Red Lick, Gravel Lick, and Owsley Fork roads.

Expenses

By national fire standard all of our structural fire uniforms need to be replaced every 10 years. This is by far our largest expense. Last fiscal year we spent almost $10 thousand dollars on gear. This year we will spend more than $10 thousand dollars.

A vital thing that every person and organization needs is insurance. Firefighting is a dangerous activity, and our insurance bill reflects that. Even with old vehicles, our insurance bill is almost $8 thousand dollars yearly.

The members of the Red Lick Volunteer Fire Department have a pride in membership and community that shows through. You could give us a million dollars a year, and that pride would not be any bigger. Our station roof leaks, our tanker has not passed a pump test in four years, and our engine is worn. But it is the volunteers that fix them when they can and maintain them. The hardships we have gone through, and the work we do bonds us in a way that I have not experienced anywhere else.

I hope I have been able to convey to you how vitally important Red Lick Volunteer Fire Department is to the community.

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ.” – Galatians 6:2