The Daily Herald has an article about a village board meeting in Barrington where the issue of the fire department split with the fire district was on the agenda.

Barrington’s village board Monday night was deluged by a standing-room-only crowd of firefighters and residents angered by the planned split of the village fire department and Barrington Countryside Fire Protection District at the end of the year.

Many in the crowd held yellow signs with slogans like “We Support One Barrington Fire Department” and “Public Safety Should Be Public Knowledge.”

Both the village and fire district have been making plans to end their long-running contractual relationship, under which the larger area of the district has received service from an expanded Barrington Fire Department. Trustees of the fire district, which serves a 48-square-mile area, have cited frustration with their efforts to ask the village for seven more firefighters to be paid for entirely by the district.

But Village President Karen Darch sought to explain Monday that the village is struggling with the long-term costs of a fire department staff far larger than the village itself needs.

These long-term costs are not just the salaries the district has offered to pay for more employees, but also the pensions, insurance and disability payments due these firefighters and their spouses long after they’ve stopped working.

Even though the village has been paying ever higher contributions to the firefighters’ pension fund each year, the fund has dropped from being fully funded in 2007 to only 78.9 percent funded in 2012, Darch said.

Barrington Trustee Tim Roberts said he sympathized with firefighters who could lose union benefits if transferred to the fire district, but he didn’t believe the changes would hurt public safety.

The complete article is HERE.

We have covered the controversy in a series of posts, the most recent of which is HERE.

thanks Chris

Tags: Barrington & Countryside Fire Protection District, Barrington Fire Department, Barrington Fire Department staffing, Barrington FPD terminates their contract with the Village of Barrington, fire district and village may split in Barrington, fire district and village split in Barrington