The Village of Richfield Public Safety Referendum with Jim Healy
Greetings, friends. Thanks for listening to Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz! This week, I am joined by a repeat guest. Village of Richfield Administrator Jim Healy joins me to talk about their upcoming public safety referendum. With changes that have taken place at the Richfield Fire Department, the village is in a position where it needs to create and fund a new department. Jim walks us through the information that is on the ballot so that you can make an informed choice when you vote. It also has a lot of good information about the state of fire and EMS departments as a whole.
If you like the show, please consider subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.
New episodes on Tuesday.
Thanks for listening!
Transcript
If you have been listening for a while, you kind of know that I have four main rules for this show. One is no politics. Two is no negativity, cynicism, or criticism. Three is be interesting. And four is keep it short. And I've actually changed the rules recently. Number three used to be no criticism, but that was really kind of an offshoot of rule number two, the no negativity or cynicism rule.
So I've put those together and I made be interesting my third rule. Anyway, last week I broke my keep it short rule. The fourth rule and the show ran about 25 minutes long, uh, for a 15 minutes podcast. It's, you know, it's almost twice as long. Uh, sorry about that. This week, I'm straddling the line on rule number one, the no politics rule, but only because it deals with an item that is election related.
We don't get into the politics of the item, but we are talking about a referendum. And this is my third ever episode about a referendum. So it's not like without precedent. And I think it's important that people know what's on their ballot. And again, we don't really get into the politics of it. It just happens to be about an election.
I'm not going to justify it. It's my show. I can, I can do what I do, what I want. Jim Healy, the Village Administrator in Richfield, joins me this week to talk about the Village of Richfield's Public Safety Referendum. There are changes going on with Richfield's Fire and EMS Department, and the referendum focuses on shoring up how these services will be covered by with these changes.
on the Village of Richfield's:Jim, welcome back on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. Happy to have you back. Thank you. It's, uh, yeah, last November? Yeah, it was last November.
[: [:Obviously, it's hitting close to home for you in Richfield. It's hitting close to home for us in Kewaskum. It's hitting close to home all over the place. Can you start by giving us a background on the state of the fire department in Richfield, kind of where things are at right now?
[:And on April 1st, they made a vote to dissolve themselves. And it was actually the day before our spring election. And so then we had to quickly decide, you know, how and in what manner we're going to move forward, knowing that we're going to be essentially doubling the amount of staff that we have here in the village presently.
And so, we sat and we talked with the board members from the Richfield Volunteer Fire Company. They said, you know, there's no way for their organization to move forward. And, we explored our options and a decision was made to, become a municipal department starting January 1st or as soon thereafter as we can do.
And so right now we're in the process of working on that transition, and, you know, we have to do things like hire a full time fire chief. We're currently without a fire chief right now. So we're doing that process and then working on, you know, getting everything in order so that there's a smooth transition and there's no interruption to service for our residents or, you know, the communities we may serve in the future.
[: [: [: [:And like you said, their own competing interests and, things that they need to do. So it's, yeah, it's become a real. A real difficulty for us.
[: [:Because all of our firefighters are trained, in EMS. Whether they're paramedics or EMT advances.
[:And it, like, going, you know, to that training, it takes a lot of training to become a paramedic. Right. It's like hundreds and, you know, Like 140, 170 hours, something like that. It's a lot of training.
It's a lot of big commitment. And they kind of keep adding more on. So there's not a lot of volunteers around and it takes a lot in order to do it. And God bless you, all of you who do that. We need more of you. And if you're listening and you think, hey, I'd like to be a paramedic, talk to your local fire chiefs and they will guide you along the way, that path to getting there. So, I'm sorry, I'm digressing. Jim, coming up on August 13th, right? To help remedy this situation for the village of Richfield. You have a public safety referendum to help establish this municipal Richfield Fire Department and EMS. Can you tell us about, you know, what's What's on the referendum?
What can your residents of the village of Ridgefield expect on that referendum?
Sure.
So
[: [:You're a pretty large community, actually, right?
[: [: [: [: [: [: [: [: [: [:What is the The plan to hire this new personnel. How, how will that transition take place?
[:And so I know Hartford was hiring a few people. West Bend always is seemingly hiring. And so. You know, there's only a finite amount of these people with this sort of special skill set. And so it is going to be difficult and recruitment and talking about what we have to offer as an organization and , the residents that we serve, I hope will be a large part of that.
[: [: [:But, does your fire and EMS department, do they serve any of those other communities directly?
[: [: [: [: [: [: [:And, we're still working on rolling out information, we just had a community wide mailer that went out, advertising for our last two public information sessions that we have in July and in August, so, but for the first meeting that we had, we had about a 30 or 40 people there and hey for any government meeting 30 or 40 people who show up that's pretty darn good.
[:Continue to stay, yeah. Yes, there's an, it's just not on the table, right? So, what, what happens from there? Is it contract with another department, or how does that work?
[:Okay. Our, our community is, is not one that generally borrows Mm-Hmm. . But we are legally obligated by Wisconsin State statutes to provide fire and EMS service. Mm-Hmm. , as well as police service to our residents. And so, our job is to make the difficult decision and find the way to make it happen.
And unfortunately, what that means is, tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary interest payments that. You know, we'll have to be paid if, if it weren't to pass. Okay.
[:Right. And there has to be Some way to do that everywhere.
[:They don't even know that we have a private fire company. They just expect if they're coming from a more urbanized area, like my neighbors came from Brown Deer, they just thought that they were municipal. And so, you know, kind of, you know, Closing the gap of that and, and talking about the institutional knowledge, that the fire company brings to our community, not only that, but all of the assets that come with it, I think is another real benefit.
We're going to be getting all of their equipment, all of their properties. So, it's, it's really a gift, that will, will get us on the right foot, heading in the right direction.
[: [: [: [: [: [:I know you had Judy on here to talk about, what's going on there. I had an opportunity to go to it last week and, you know, I was surprised at the number of vendors that we have, the diversity of vendors that we have, and you know, now all we need is the vegetables to, to, you know, start producing and we'll be ready to rock and roll.
[: [: [: [:We've got a, just a tremendous show, great entertainment, great music and food. So, encourage everybody to come out the last weekend in August and have a great time with their family.
[: [: [:I used to host country karaoke at the Mineshaft like every Friday night of my life from when I was like, I don't know, 21 till I was like 31. I was so glad when the, the no smoking laws in Wisconsin went into effect, like, two years after I started that, and I was like, so thankful. Um, anyway, I met the Mantz brothers there, and then they, like, ended up in, like, Nashville and stuff like that.
[:Are there two Richfields? Yeah, but it's great. They're great to us.
They keep coming home. And, they've got quite the following. So
I can't wait to see them perform.
[:Alright, very good. Jim, it was great to see you.
[: [:You can email me fuzz@fuzzmartin.com. That is fuzz@fuzzmartin.com. You could text me 2 6 2 2 9 9 fuzz. That is 2 6 2 2 9 9 3 8 9 9 or you can use the suggested guest. Form at fuzz. cc slash guest, that is fuzz. cc slash guest. You can listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are played.
New episodes come out on Tuesdays. Next week, Lori Prescott joins me to talk about the new Vortex Pickleball Club that is coming to West Bend, and I can't wait for you to hear about it. So we'll talk to you then, right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
