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The Fredonia Fire Department is set to reorganize.
The volunteer section of the department has been composed of four companies since 1901. Company pride was a hallmark of the system. Companies competed in everything -- membership totals and getting to emergency calls first, but also with things like bands, fundraisers and various sports.
"It was very effective for many, many years. In fact, probably for 75 or 80 years it was a really competitive kind of response. Each company wanted to get there first (and wanted) a larger number of members, and on and on and on," said Julius Leone, who heads up Fredonia's volunteers, at a village Board of Trustees meeting Monday.
However, he continued, "Those days have long been gone."
The trustees gave consent for a merger of the companies Monday, and a public hearing about it is set before the next board meeting at 6 p.m. on Dec. 26.
"We started looking at it from the perspective of a business that doesn't keep up with the trends of the time," Leone told the board. "Chances are, they're not going to exist. We've been chipping away at this for 10 years and more intensely over the last year."
With four volunteer companies, plus the full-time paid unit, "We had five sets of bylaws, five presidents, five secretaries, five treasurers. It worked back in the day but it got to be very confusing. ... It got to be even more confusing in terms of response."
Leone stated that volunteerism is trending down in fire departments, both across the nation and locally.
If Fredonia's volunteers formed one fire company, "We think that's going to do a much better job and make a better organization to perform and respond to our community needs, better than we can do now," he said.
Leone said each company's trustees voted to allow the entire fire department to vote on consolidation. An attorney developed a plan of merger and the fire department's vote is later this week.
"It's a tough decision. Something that's been in place for more than 100 years," Leone said.
Mayor Douglas Essek, who has a long association with the Fredonia Fire Department, said to Leone, "I applaud you, and your committee, and the department for making this decision."
Essek said the fire department is basically doing what is done at an emergency scene when something goes wrong. "We stop, we regroup, we rethink what we're doing, and try to do the job better."
The mayor added, "I was part of the old regime, the old crew, the old guys, and the way things were done. Things have changed. Our call volumes have changed, the types of calls have changed."