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23 Comments

• #1 by Austin on February 15, 2023 - 8:07 AM

  

  Wayne, I understand. I’m just saying people do think this. In the case of Campton Hills I know its true because the town had a workshop where residents came to the town hall, and were asked to write down what they wanted. Their own station was a common request. Right or wrong, that’s up for debate. However for this specific department, how it was started will forever make it an uphill battle to get people on board with FRC. They need a good chief to get the message out why they need the money, how it will be spent, and be more forthcoming. I do not know anything about their current chief, but the last one wasn’t very good. The towns in the SW suburbs you mentioned is a little different as they are either tiny (Justice) or are all right next to each other, and are densely populated. FRC’s district is massive, and is cut through the middle by St. Charles and parts of Sout Elgin. To get from station 1, to across the river they have to drive through St. Charles to get to their district. So would it not make more sense for the consolidation to be with St. Charles and/or South Elgin?

• #2 by Tim on February 14, 2023 - 5:39 PM

  

  Wayne and Andy you guys are absolutely right. I’ve mentioned on this forum multiple times about Division 24 (almost as much as Mike C brings up Pierces Tak-4 and Command Zone).

  Division 24…under manned , out gunned. Numerous 1 or 2 station depts. with a lot of fire duty and 2 man companies. Many 1 station depts. with 2 engines, 2 ambulances and a truck. All with chiefs, deputy chiefs, administrations, etc. Tons of redundancy and zero efficiency. Not bashing the guys on the street because they’re doing what they can with what they got. You can even throw Division 27 into this too.

• #3 by Andy on February 14, 2023 - 5:12 PM

  

  Consolidation is the future. We should be decreasing the number of departments and reducing overlap and redundancy, not creating more.

• #4 by Wayne on February 14, 2023 - 1:31 PM

  

  As far as people wanting their own fire department, that’s not inherently true at all. Willow Springs, Justice, Peotone, and Worth have all given up their fire departments in the past 15 or so years and joined districts. Peotone just did it effective January 1st of this year. A lot of towns gave them up a long time ago. There’s a lot of districts that cover multiple towns, and districts that contract with fire departments to give them coverage. Indianapolis has absorbed a number of Marion County fire departments down there, and county wide fire departments are prevalent on the east coast, and a lot of places in California. Milwaukee just gave a firehouse to West Allis last month to combine a coverage area on the borders of those two towns. Even in EMS, dispatch, and law enforcement there’s a ton of examples of shared services all over the country. Almost no one around here runs individual dispatch centers any more, especially for EMS and fire. Frankly it doesn’t make sense in most cases for a bunch of towns to have their own individual command staffs for a couple square miles, and you can distribute ambulances and fire companies way more effectively, and justify staffing specialty units like tech rescue and hazmat when resources are combined. The places that have a hard time consolidating do bad jobs at messaging and explaining the benefits, and civilians “just wanting their own department” doesn’t mean it makes sense. Civilians who don’t understand the fire service shouldn’t be dictating how we do it if we are truly providing the best possible service.

• #5 by Austin on February 14, 2023 - 7:29 AM

  

  Wayne, I don’t think its strange at all. They have their own full time police department, and most people think a town should have its own department. I mean look at some of the departments in Chicagolnad who wanted to merge, but the citizens protested. Its just something people think every town should have, police and fire. 11,000 is not that small of a town, and the population is actually closer to 13,000. Right or wrong, that is just what people think no matter the town.

• #6 by Wayne on February 13, 2023 - 6:58 PM

  

  In a day and age where departments are struggling for manpower and many are looking to consolidate in all different ways, it’s wild that people would be mad that FRCFR separated from St. Charles, and then advocating that a town of 11,000 people would separate again and form their own fire department.

• #7 by Steve Axis on February 13, 2023 - 7:42 AM

  

  There’s a lot of hate for a fire district that is actually better than many others in the surrounding areas. Fox River has some amazingly talented and seasoned personnel. Many are retired from other departments that I guarantee have had more action than many other personnel on other departments. I personally witnessed Fox River on an incident a few months ago. They responded to the incident very appropriately and professionally. I can honestly say, I was impressed. The history for Fox River clearly isn’t great but I can honestly say, they are a good agency in respect to their staff.

• #8 by Austin on February 12, 2023 - 9:42 PM

  

  So for clarification, I lived in Campton Hills until 2014, and I still have family and friends who live there. The majority of people you talk to in that district, especially in Campton Hills is they saw zero reason to drop STC. FRC was also done nearly in secrecy which will forever be the reason people hate them. Another thing to remember is a lot of people in that district have lived there for decades, it isn’t an area of massive turn over in the people who live there. The mismanagement for the first half plus of the district also didn’t do them any favors. STC had plans in place to improve service, the board thought they could do better. Whether they did or didn’t is up for debate. I personally think if STC was given the chance to build a new station and a station for ambulances deeper in the district, STC would do better. By no means do I dislike the people who work for FRC, they are doing the best they can. But what happened for years, and how it was done will take a long time to be forgotten.

  Drew, Campton Hills was created by people who wanted to stop Elgin form taking farmland, and building subdivisions. Which coincidently Campton Hills never actually was able to annex the land for said development, and it was built anyway. And Elgin has since just annexed most of the land around the northern border of the town. It was far from a landslide, and there are people who still dislike being incorporated. Although not nearly as many as the whole FRC thing. Residents talk about having their own department, as well as other regular things a town has i.e a library. If it was put on ballot to create their own department, people would vote on it. The area is wealthy, has a commercial corridor, plus some light industry. Campton Hills has the means to do it. Cost is not the issue. However the service would be better then it is now because it would cover a substantially smaller area then what FRC has. If something has to come form the station off of Rt 25, and head to Campton Hills, that is a longer response time than they ever had with firefighters responding from STC station 3. And I have seen this first hand happen with ambulances. Bottom-line is a lot of the residents would pay more for a Campton Hills only department, it is the town who is not fighting for it.

• #9 by rich s. on February 11, 2023 - 5:32 PM

  

  Is this replacing the 1988 Spartan/E-One ?? formerly River Grove (never placed in service) and Chicago Ridge??

• #10 by Drew Smith on February 11, 2023 - 3:41 PM

  

  I won’t argue the merits of whether a municipality should have their own FD or not. It may be that “there is zero reason as to why Campton Hills cannot have their own department” but there are reasons why it may not be able to happen.

  First, without asking the residents of the municipality or the elected village board no one knows if it’s wanted. Second, even if it is wanted somehow they would have to pay for it and that’s no small challenge. As Campton Hills has a population of about 11,000 they do not have home rule and are subject to the PTELL (property tax extension limitation law) commonly referred to as the tax cap.

  Assuming the voters would approve home rule or approve a tax under a PTELL referendum the fire protection district could challenge the formation because to disconnect territory from a FPD permits a court to determine whether doing so would cause harm to the portion of the FPD that would remain.

  Any funding of a new fire department at the current level would likely result in a similar operation such as a contract provider (the same or different) as used by the FPD. To move to a full time model where the firefighter/paramedics are employed by the FPD would likely require more funding and would by state law require those employees to be part of the pension which also requires funding. With that said, I am not advocating for or against any particular model. I have my own operations to manage. However, none of this is as simple as it may seem.

  In the end, there is a reason that the FPD withdrew from its relationship with the City and that reason was a disagreement on how much service should cost. There is also a reason Campton Hills incorporated as a village in 2007. Any discussion about changing the model will certainly require a complete and thoughtful analysis of the required finances. Perhaps being aware of that the village ops not to even consider it. And perhaps the FPD is well aware of its needs and is working towards its own changes.

• #11 by Mike on February 11, 2023 - 3:31 PM

  

  Rich s. The issue with these guys is when they formed as a non paper fire district they told everyone they could do this for way less costs then st. Charles. Then their board of trustees starting talking garbage about lazy union firemen and how they can provide better service service with a contract service. Well over the years they have changed contract services multiple times, don’t have any staffing and from year 2 cost more then what their contract with St. Charles was. Then they started asking for more money every year and claiming if they didn’t get it services would be reduced, all while buying new equipment. This science experiment has been a failure since day 1 and if they stayed with st. Charles the services the taxpayers would have now vs. what they have now should have been better 100 times over again. That’s why there is disdain towards them.

• #12 by rich s. on February 11, 2023 - 3:24 PM

  

  ?? Why is there so much hate for this department? I have not seen a single positive posting about the FRC FD ever on here? They are trying to provide a service I believe. Is this a personal thing? Do you live in the community and pay taxes to the organization? With so many other problems in the world today seems it would be better to try and support their efforts to serve.

• #13 by Tyler on February 11, 2023 - 10:22 AM

  

  South Elgin finished out with a little over 3750 for 2022 with three stations. FRC did just go through some large changes with administration- South Elgin’s Retired A/C became the Fire Chief at FRC and they did just pass a referendum after multiple failed attempts over the years. I believe they have purchased land in the center of the district on Bolcum Rd for a third station to open as they do spread pretty far east to west. Not to mention the increase of population along Randall road in their district.
  They do have a rough past with rigs, but it seems that this simple no-nonsense pumper will suit them fine compared to the older purchases.
  Campton Hills was already apart of the FRC “paper district” which always just contracted St Charles until they decided to form their own dept. The way the district was drawn- Campton Hills was together with Wayne either way.
  I will say that the original board and admin was trash for that fire district and will take a very long time to undo.

• #14 by Austin on February 11, 2023 - 8:50 AM

  

  Michael St. Charles has not released 2022 numbers yet, but in 2021 it was 5,171 total calls, with 93 fires of various types. STC has about 32,000 people, while all of FRC’s area is 20-25k people.

  As far as where the stations are for STC, they owned landed at Rt. 31 and Red Gate rd, (across the street from STC North Highschool) that was to be the 4th fire station. They also were going to build an ambulance station at Burlington Rd and Bolcum Rd, which is about a 1/4 mile north of FRC Campton Hills station. Both plans were dropped when FRC was formed. So they would have been fine coverage wise, plus Elburn built a station at Rt 47 and Rt 64 which is only a couple of miles from what was STC’s district. But there is zero reason as to why Campton Hills can not have their own department, and should buy the station in town from FRC and make it the Campton Hills fire department.

• #15 by Steve Axis on February 11, 2023 - 7:26 AM

  

  Back a few years ago, Fox River had some International/Alexis rigs. Fox River had Alexis take the body and pump off of one of the International chassis and put it on a new Spartan chassis. It was the white/green paint scheme at the time. I’m not sure if Fox River has this rig anymore but it can’t be a very old rig. To be frank, it was actually kind of a neat looking rig.

• #16 by Mike C on February 10, 2023 - 1:07 PM

  

  I’m also a bit perplexed to why they buy so many rigs with such a low call volume.

  What is the roster for their rigs?

• #17 by Rob on February 10, 2023 - 10:39 AM

  

  The call volume for 2022 was 2,055, in 2021 calls were over 1, 800

  This new engine was emergency purchase/demo the cost was $591,737

  also ordered is 2 2023 Ford F550 4×4/PL Custom Ambo’s. They also placed a 3rd ambo in service.

• #18 by Harry on February 10, 2023 - 10:28 AM

  

  Could they be leasing them on a 3-5 year basis

• #19 by Michael m on February 10, 2023 - 8:58 AM

  

  That come out to 2,000 ish calls a year average about 6 a day. How many calls did St. Charles and South Elgin do last year? The only positive is Wayne and Campton Hills need some sort of fire protection. St. Charles stations are just too far from either town.
  I don’t know why Campton Hills did not start it’s own FD when it officially incorporated in 2007.

• #20 by Austin on February 10, 2023 - 8:24 AM

  

  I think they are trying hard to be like St. Charles and other surrounding communities that get new apparatus on a fairly regular basis. But the difference is they have money and much higher call volume, and their fleets are well maintained. FRC is on par with Burlington, Maple Park, and other smaller departments in western Kane County. Smaller call volumes, but those departments keep their apparatus for years. In the now 13 years FRC was started they have gone through several new International/Alexis apparatus, serval Spartan/Alexis engines, a refurbished Seagrave, plus the reserve engines they bought. The reserves and the Seagrave I would expect to be gone in the 13 years, not the new apparatus. Minus mutual aid, they don’t even have many working fires in their district. In 2022 they had 521 fire incidents and 1,534 EMS incidents. So why do they keep buying new apparatus?

• #21 by Michael m on February 10, 2023 - 6:13 AM

  

  I wonder which station this rig will go to? Interesting looking front grille. I understand having to replace ambulances on a regular basis, but shouldn’t engines last at least 10 years?

• #22 by crabbymilton on February 10, 2023 - 5:53 AM

  

  A rrefreshing and no nonsense rig here. Ilike the placement of the green light.

• #23 by Mike on February 10, 2023 - 12:31 AM

  

  So now they have money to make more poor decisions? This place has gone through more equipment since it’s inception then the rest of the area has. For place that has a very slow call volume and no money they always are in need of new apparatus

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