Residents of the West Porter Township Fire Protection District and Four Seasons Volunteer Fire Force Chief Kevin Heerema, whose force serves those residents, made their displeasure at the district board meeting’s change of venue known Wednesday night.
The quarterly meetings have always been held at a firehouse in the district, but Wednesday’s meeting was changed to the Board of Commissioners Chambers at the Porter County Administration Building in Valparaiso with two days’ notice.
At least eight residents, plus Heerema, addressed the five-member board about the change and the consensus that a fire territory is wanted. “It’s upsetting that I have to come out here tonight,” said Lakes of the Four Seasons resident Scott Aubrey. “It’s very concerning what’s going on here. I don’t appreciate anything that’s been done here by the fire board.”
Aubrey also tried to get every member of the board to tell the crowd how they were qualified to serve and wanted to know if they had any background in fire service.
Board of Commissioners President Jim Biggs, R-North, has been adamant that he does not want a board full of veteran first responders and would like folks with a background in tax levying to serve as the issue of the territory formation continues, though no one with an explicit tax background has been appointed.
New board member Guy Kosmoski told the crowd he has 35 years of capital budgeting experience, while board member Rob Rabelhofer, a 25-year career firefighter, is the only member with fire experience.
Joe Wiszowaty, who had just been voted the board’s new chair, cut Aubrey off. “Those appointments are made by the commissioners,” said Wiszowaty, who is himself employed by the commissioners as Porter County’s facilities director.
There have been complaints of a conflict of interest over Wiszowaty’s appointment to the board but Biggs has defended the appointment saying Wiszowaty was appointed to the fire board before he was hired by the county.
The room had a full crowd and was uncomfortably hot because the air conditioning wasn’t running. One person commented that it was intentionally shut off. Summer evening meetings in the chamber are always air-conditioned and the lobby just outside the room was cool.
Former Porter County Councilman Dan Whitten, who is on the Democrat ticket for south county commissioner in November, spoke of his personal experience on two fronts: As a councilman belaboring for years the concept of forming a fire district to no avail, and his years seeing crisis firsthand as a U.S. Army helicopter flight medic.
“This is not a political football,” he said. “The lives of these people mean more than that. Anything beyond establishing a fire territory is white noise.”
That garnered enthusiastic applause from the audience. The formation of a territory failed in a vote on March 19 and cannot come up for a new vote until after the first of the year. Currently, the nonprofit Lakes of the Four Seasons Volunteer Fire Department serves Winfield Township, the town of Winfield, and the WPFPD.
During his report, Heerema said the department had responded to 868 calls as of July 1, up almost 200 calls over last year. He reiterated that while his department responds to ambulance calls when it is able, “in all legality, Northwest Health is your ambulance if you live within the district.”
He said a resident in the center of Lakes of the Four Seasons would easily wait 25 minutes for the Northwest Health ambulance to come from its station on Indiana 8 between Hebron and Kouts if his fully volunteer department could not respond. He gave another example of two fires back-to-back over the recent holiday.
Volunteers were able to respond to the second fire within six minutes. “We had the benefit of having four of our volunteers in the station at the time the call came in,” Heerema said. “If there would have been no one there, you’re 20 to 30 minutes easily.”
Wiszowaty told the crowd the board is getting pricing on mailers to go out to every resident in WPTFPD to begin a more vigorous campaign to raise awareness of the concept of forming a fire territory.
“We will do all we can to make sure that every single resident is reached so they can understand the decisions that we will be making,” said Wiszowaty who has experience as a former St. John town manager attempting to form a fire territory between St. John, Schererville and Dyer.
Wiszowaty said many hours of meetings were held between officials of those towns, though the territory never came to fruition. Lakes of the Four Seasons resident and trained firefighter and EMT Craig Engle had a message for his fellow constituents if Porter County officials can’t do better.
He said an election is looming. “If things do not start changing for the better for our community today, we all have the power.”
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
