WAUPUN — The City of Waupun announced Tuesday evening the first draft of a proposed joining of resources for regional emergency response resources between the City and three surrounding townships.
The Fire and Emergency Services Agreement would be between the City of Waupun, Town of Chester, Town of Trenton, Town of Waupun—combining all resources under the Waupun Fire Department to be led by Waupun Fire Chief BJ DeMaa.
Fire Chief DeMaa presented the draft to the Waupun City Council at the Special Common Council meeting Tuesday, September 30. This was followed by a press release by the City of Waupun sent out immediately after the meeting announcing the proposal.
During the meeting, Chief DeMaa explained a brief history behind the process to combine the departments. Previously, the Waupun Fire Department and townships fire department were separate entities—though both led by BJ DeMaa out of the Waupun Safety Building—which cooperated regularly but technically separate due to previous separate needs.
The idea of a merger was brought up at one of the biannual meetings in 2017. Serious talks began in 2018 and went through several meetings on several projects until this year.
Through the process, they identified several challenge areas that the proposal would address. Namely, expensive duplicate equipment, outdated processes and agreements, increasing call volume, and long-term paid-on-call staffing concerns.
Among the general terms are outlines for the ownership of existing and future property. The City is solely responsible for the purchase of a ladder truck purchase while towns are solely responsible for the purchase of a tender. It also noted that each party retains title of owned equipment until replaced, with joint purchases of capital and equipment moving forward.
The proposal included a list of responsibilities for all parties, between the City and townships.
The City would be responsible for maintaining compliance with state and federal laws, maintain training and certification records and compliance for City employees, provide and maintain a ladder truck, equipment maintenance, insurance, and facility maintenance and costs.
The townships would be responsible for paying an Annual Service Fee, provide and maintain tender to NFPA Standards, make capital contributions, and adopt ordinance amendments to recognize the Waupun Fire Department as its fire department and the authority of the Waupun Fire Chief within each Town or within the Service Area.
Also outlined in the agreement was the creation of a new Emergency Services Committee, which would include one representative from the City, one representative from each Town, the WFD Chief or a designee, and the Waupun City Administrator non-voting ex officio member. This committee would meet twice a year to review and approve annual operating budgets, but it would be advisory only, with final decisions to the Waupun City Council.
City Administrator Kathy Schlieve outlined the shared value of the combined Fire Department, along with some draft operating budgets.
Adopting this agreement would have several benefits, namely cost savings from shared resources and less duplicates, streamlined coordination and administration, and equitable distribution of costs, among others.
The final page of the presentation outlined the next steps for the process, which would include a meeting with the townships in the month of October to review and adopt the drafted agreement. If approved by all parties by November, the agreement will go into effect on January 1, 2026.
The item was discussion-only with no recommended motion. A set of presentation slides were included in the meeting agenda packet.
Near the end of the meeting during the monthly department reports, Chief DeMaa also reminded the Council that Fire Prevention Week was the following week, October 5 through 11. On Monday, October 6 starting at 5PM, the Waupun Fire Department will be hosting an open house event at the Waupun Safety Building with the Waupun Police Department, SSM Health, and other county emergency management groups.
DeMaa also stated that Fire Department leadership would be meeting with the Department of Health Services next week to develop plans to move to a transport level EMS service, which would be a backup to the current contracted service.
