No: 27: Volunteer firefighters

You are listening to the Matt about Montana podcast with Eric Nyland and Bill Foley. Join us as we dive into the important issues that affect the people of Montana and beyond. Listen in as we give voices to the voiceless and whistles to the whistleblowers. Together we will expose corruption and dysfunction on both sides of the aisle and in every walk of life. Our mission is accountability and hopefully we just might make you laugh a little bit along the way. Now let's get Matt about Montana. All right Eric, I'd like to say back by popular demand but I don't think it's popular but back by a little bit of a demand. And I should start off by saying whenever I talk to the volunteer firefighters I feel like my mom and dad are divorced and I'm getting like the one side, you know, no matter who I talk to. If I talk to volunteers, you know, so I feel like I'm stuck in the middle but this is kind of an explosive topic. It's going on for 50 years now in but I think it's important because we have an election coming up or we really have to let the volunteers get there. What they're saying on the story instead of fighting about it on Facebook with some people. Well, that's all I see. I see the firefighter's union putting all this stuff on Facebook saying this is the way it is and like so many things coming out of the courthouse right now. We don't seem to have a lot of facts oftentimes lacking integrity and by the way the injunction over the ballot initiative Supreme Court ruled in our favor today. Our constitutional rights and you know, hopefully these guys don't end up going that route too and but we're going to make sure that the public understands these things and I think if we take a little bit step back. You know, we talked about the process that led to Senator Derek Harvey, career firefighter, his house bill 547 and you know, the denials of JP Gallagher that he knew anything about it and all that. And you know, we foy it buts over bow and got some information that yeah, I know about it a little bit before but this morning I thought, you know, there's a thing the legislature called a junk file. So when a legislative requests legislation, you can get the background and sometimes they're not that detailed, but you know, we'll give the background on it and. You know, the surprise bill they didn't know anything about their carvy record requested in November 2024 and you know, see discussions where he's talking about his discussions with butes over bow and in early in mid February. You know, we know that there were discussions and let Senator Harvey was not not being honest and I mean, honestly, Matt in Ruth, he's the one who's been honest when I asked him, he's the guy we talked about, you know, that was it nobody asked him on the record commissioners didn't ask him but the way. You know, Gallagher treated commissioner Fisher and all that and the attacks we got after were crazy, but you know, I remember the legislative testimony and some of you guys may have been there that said we're not trying to we're not trying to eliminate volunteer fire departments and. So it sure seems like everything we're trying to do seems to point that direction they keep saying that we're not trying to do it trying to do that and I. When when Senator Harvey requested hb 547 and this came this morning from the legislature. Said his purpose is to dissolve volunteer fire department all the volunteer fire departments to should been a dissolved as with the city of but in the county bits of her bow he's he's trying to go back in history and dissolve volunteer fire departments that's in his you know, his reasoning that his words he wrote. So I mean, truly, you know, I think we need to talk about the ramification of the revocation we also need to talk about honesty and integrity yeah for sure and that's you know, we get attacked for talking about these things and I don't care. I'm not the one who wrote these words there they're Harvey, you know, is the legislative website people should question him why he said that not. Not attack anybody else and today we have three chiefs his first time ever might be the first podcast in history to have three chiefs. We have Brandon Dale from the big but fire department which I used to always say centerville is best but now I live living in big but for longer than I lived in the center of the district so I will go with big but number one we got rocker chief Jonathan Rice and two we met her as I said, what's the matter matter, okay. So and you're the chief of racetrack fire hall and we just wanted to kind of get you guys I know we were on Facebook we see the fight and back and forth notice you're not fighting back and forth people on Facebook you might post something and then the fights ensue after but this it's a ballot it's on the ballot this week's part of the study commission they they basically are given. It's basically are given us two options one that you guys feel is pretty much a death sentence for the volunteer fire departments right absolutely death sentence yeah. Big reason why unified fire service doesn't work for the volunteers is it takes away our retirement there's no incentive for us to be volunteer firemen in Silverbow County without having a retirement yeah that retirement is through the state of Montana. We're just going to do things like we didn't high school and just do it with an impulse and we're not going to have a plan on the back end. So let me ask you you know of the 56 counties in Montana state law applies to all but this this specific issue I'm not mistaken there's 55 counties that seemed to operate just fine running under state law. About 360 volunteer fire departments in the state of Montana and they all run under the Montana codes annotated were the only ones that seemed to be not because they consolidated in 1977 and you know they legally stole our budgets back then. And those volunteer firefighters back in 1977 conceded a little bit because they knew the future was in trouble and listen I'm talking some some dirt about about some of this stuff today but I love this city always have born and raised here. I'm very proud of this town but it there's times that I'm very disgusted with how this town operates and this happens to be one of them. This whole thing is turned out just like I said it's like high school fight and we're doing it on Facebook and you can see who the integrity or the protagonists are you know he posts all the time I'm not going to throw his name out but he post all the time and he throws things out there and yeah he's trying to draw us in on a fight but why fight on Facebook like what what is that prove. It doesn't prove anything when we should be sitting down in a room and having adult conversations which we should have done the beginning that JP Gallagher promised us oh we're going to sit down we're going to have a conversation. And guess what never happened we never sat down had a conversation that tried to railroad us with house bill 547 now they're trying to railroad us again and get rid of us and if this goes through a unified fire service we'll get rid of the volunteers. Okay so let's let's talk about you know this is human nature you guys lose your pens with bad I'd care about that a lot of people. You should point out the pensions what $250 a month is that it's not it's not giant no no but which always tells me something you guys are doing that for $250 you're willing to run into my house on fire and carry my ass out. But it's for $250 a month I think that's impressive. That's that's a part the people don't get about volunteer firefighters right it's not just that it's giving back to the community right yeah you're not doing for money by any search. Or protecting your own your own pocket but with the home insurance so what why should the people of you care it's our pocket books it is our pocket. That's why everybody should be an informed voter so so let's you know I mean we deviate a little bit and get back to that. Let's say that you know the option goes through that just gets rid of you guys consolidated all this stuff and you guys just appear. And you know we don't have fire departments isn't there a standard you know I know my family has a place place out of town that we pay a pretty hefty premium and we're we're still within the limit because of the distance we are away from a fire station. I know people just further down the road can't get insurance at all now so what is that standard for but what's the distance where you have to start worrying about. Either getting really expensive insurance or not insurance at all well it's five miles five miles from a fire station road miles five road miles paid. So so let's say because that eliminates a lot of people right there the furthest South fire station is the one you'll kind of by Emerson there. If you live more than five paved road miles from there you know if if the volunteers were to go away you your insurance is at risk. Oh absolutely teraverty rocker out in that area those are all at high risk because there'll be five miles away from station two when if the volunteers are gone station two is the only station left on the South side. So I'm curious we went through this process and all these you know I'm going to see the experts in the courthouse came up with these plans. Did anybody ever call the insurance commission and say what are the overall impacts of impacts of fire insurance rates or insurance rates and beats over both. No because that sounds like something responsible adults would do but obviously we're not. So you're telling me I live in the middle of town I live up by the hospital I'm not covered by a volunteer fire district or anything but because insurance companies calculate rates based on counties. So we do the wrong thing here as voters and make the wrong decision. My insurance rates, even though I'm a couple blocks from the fire station, my insurance rates can go up. And then my family who lives out in beef trail under it roads, they're probably just so well. Potentially, potentially. We didn't get these answers because nobody called the insurance commissioner. Sweet James Brown. Because nobody wants to do the background of it. Their idea is just, well, we're just going to sweep the volunteers away. Because they know we leave, and then they're going to put it on the face. But oh, we're not trying to get rid of the volunteers. But why is the IFF so involved if it's not about getting rid of us? Because the IFF only cares about money. And the only way they get more money is if they get rid of the volunteers. And it's the current political environment that we live in at the moment, that I'm going to do something that makes you leave. And then I'm going to blame you for leaving. And so they're going to go to the taxpayers they're going to be like, I don't know why the volunteers left. But now we've got to raise your taxes because we need more career farming. Because they're all gone. The volunteers chose to leave. Seems like you guys are in abusive relationship because I'm looking at this garbage right here written by a legislator slash professional firefighter that, you know, nobody knew anything about before the hearing, wants to dissolve volunteer fire departments. And I've never heard an explanation why he would want to, I've heard denials that they want to do that. So, what is the benefit? What's the real benefit? What would be the benefit? I mean, building more fire stations and having more professional firefighter, which of course did have to do a levy. I have to pay a lot more taxes. But what did they do that you don't do? How about somebody else jump in? Crickets. Well, I guess what they're going to lean on the arguments that they've thrown out there is they're better trained, they're safer. We've had no safety complaints, right? So, I guess, you know, firefighter for firefighter, I guess I'd like to know what they're stacking up against. Well, I have to wonder, too, that brings up another question. In my lifetime, and I didn't leave them to do it the whole time, I was born and grew up and left them all back, I've never seen a woman in the view of fire department. And I've seen a lot of women involved, you guys have women involved in fire ranks, right? Yes. We currently have eight females on the roster here at Raistrak. Just Raistrak? Raistrak is one. Just Raistrak's one. I believe we have three or four of them? Four of them? We believe four of them. Four of them? We have one. I think you. So, you know what I'm going to go back to just thinking of this, and I mentioned one of you before. I mean, you know, the attraction to fire when you think about camp and you know, you build a campfire, you know, a little kid, you're obsessed with fire, it's a primal fear, it's an necessity, there's all kinds of exciting things about it, there's always a little girl that's just excited, too. So if you, they've imbued, and you want to get into firefighting, volunteer is really the only path for you if you want an option. Well, it is, and it isn't, you don't have to come from volunteer departments to get hired on. As a matter of fact, our current director of fire services was never in a volunteer department. But he's also never a woman. Well, I don't ask you. You know, and out of the, out of the, what, six chiefs that they have, only one of them came from a volunteer department, but if you're a woman and you want to get into fire, if you live in Bill Montana, volunteers it, it's about it. There's a glass ceiling, whether we want to say it out loud or not. Well, all right, most, most other major cities have had a female firefighter on there. Yeah, including Anaconda fire. I noticed. Yeah. So Anaconda is not a major subject, but they have a firefighter. So that's, so when they say, it's just a little town. So when they say they're not as good or they're not as trained and all those things, that might be part of what they mean. Yeah. Well, all right. I'm going to give a little bit of credit, a little bit, so the firefighter department responds on medicals, right? Because they took that away from us, the last study commission that, or advisory, whatever, in 1996. Once again, the volunteers conceding a little bit that the career fire department could have that medical run. So you can see them that their call volume is a lot larger than the volunteers, because 90% of the fire calls aren't fire calls, they're medical calls. So they get a response on the medicals, which is fine and dandy. I don't know about you guys, but I haven't pretty happy just being on the fire end. So let me ask you, I mean, I'm glad you mentioned that, because there's a couple of things in view, where a lot of cities, the municipal fire department, they have ambulance crews. They have ambulance sitting in the bays. But you never have to have those, and I think we know why there's the but agreement and things like that. But when do you mention that, I didn't know the volunteers ever did medical, but I remember the fire study that ARPA funds paid for, you know, my old boss was half a getting those funds. And you know, I mean, the intent of Congress, you have to get pretty loose drunk stone and cover one eye to get to the point to use it for things like that. But hey, whatever, who am I? We drafted that study, and the results of the study came out and they identified some of my medical calls. And I think you guys will have to correct me even wrong, spend while they looked at it. It was something like 97% of the responses from the view fire department or medical, right? It's probably pretty close to that. It's pretty close to that. I don't know the exact. It was in the high 90s. But yeah, it's pretty close. But the other thing they identified and said every other community in the United States, if the government bears the cost of medical responses and does the EMT paramedic work for the private ambulance firm that builds insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, all those sorts of things, the government builds back and recovers those costs. And they identified that Buke doesn't actually recover those costs. So when we're talking about this issue, I mean, the underlying thing on a lot of this is money and resources. You guys are all underfunded for years. And you get criticized because you don't have the latest equipment, you don't have the latest training, all that sort of stuff. How many multi-millions of dollars have not been reimbursed to the broader fire budget? There could be users who are exactly that and maybe we wouldn't have had this dispute. And you know, it's not on me to pick out which department, head or which department made the decision to not bill. But it's been going on for a long time. And there's millions of dollars that are due back to the taxpayers' abuse that could be used for better fire services, am I wrong? Not disputing that at all, yeah. But I mean, that's what that study said, correct? Yeah. Now, you guys are in the meeting. I don't, I can't, I don't have it stomach to watch all the commission meetings. I just don't, with all the various things that go on. But did, has that even been discussed as a potential resolution for some of these issues between professional and volunteer fire department? Those resources? No. No. I've never been addressed. So the answer is basically instead of address the elephants in the room, let's just catch your guys out at the knees. Or the public, really, because if you live out in terroverty and stuff, what happens to your insurance rates? You probably lose them. Yeah, if you can get it. After all those California fires, the residents out in the outlining areas are losing insurance, because no insurance company wants to actually-- Oh, they don't want to pay anything. They just want to take your money. They won't even take your money out for some of these people, so-- I can tell you, from the federal policy side, the reinsurance industry, the big funders of insurance. They're looking at that. They're looking at states of Montana that have lax zoning, where it's the wild west, where we just don't have rules. And there are places out there that just operate willy-nilly that don't have sound policies in place that they're not going to ensure. And if we start acting all rough shot over this and doing things half-assed, you know, the people of view should be informed of what's really at risk. So what are you ultimately saying in the long run here, you're saying that there should be accountability? They're very much should be accountability. What is the biggest problem in Silverbow County? There is no accountability across the board. We go up to the courthouse, the answers, either, you know, it's not my fault that somebody else or just outright why. I've said it already a couple of times, but I think that we should break consolidation. I honestly do. I believe that consolidation has bred to this good ol' boy system that everybody has to be related somehow towards the top, and that's all it's doing. It's just breeding the cycle over and over again, and then nobody's being held accountable. Because there's no city to keep the county accountable, it's just all one. And then we give ultimate power to our chief executive, who obviously gets to do whatever he wants. Well, two way I got it, you know, you're probably right, 'cause there's only, I think, 17 merged city counties in the United States, and most of them don't even function as governments, it's kind of been absorbed, and we could make it work, but one thing that every city or county of any size has that functions just well everywhere in the real world is the city manager, and not appointing somebody who's effectively a Caesar or an Emperor. But, you know, I digress. But, you know, I mean, there's, that that's not on the ballot, a city manager, a professional city council, and what we do with fire is on the ballot, and, you know, these are critical decisions. I mean, if I think if people abuse objectively see that, oh, things are running well with, with things like, let's ignore citizens and mock them, or come up and speak, or let's ignore their constitutional rights, let's make fun of volunteer firefighters who are oftentimes multigenerational lake. to see people who have served this community. If people are happy with the way things are going, and if they're related to the right family or something like that, vote to keep status quo. The rest of us, we got to try something different. Now, as far as you guys with two options, I mean, we've identified some of the challenges. And honestly, we were open-minded. We didn't know enough about this, it should be 547. And started asking questions. I think the reaction bill that we got just by asking questions, you would have thought we kidnapped Lindbergh, baby, just by asking questions. And I'm not a volunteer firefighter, I can only imagine what you guys feel. So it's been pressure. So let me ask. I'm a big believer. Bill and I have talked about this a lot on our previous podcast. We think that the people, people in Montana, people of Bu, we deserve better. We deserve better from our government. We pay a lot of taxes. We were good people. We deserve better. We deserve transparency. So when we think about fire services, let's say you guys talked a little bit too about national standards and safety. Now, you guys, as far as a safety record, you know, because they've implied safety as an issue. And it's implied. But nobody has ever said, "Well, we got these volunteer firefighters doing XYZ and creating all these safety hazards." I mean, there's documentation if you guys have an accident, isn't there? Workers comp? Of course. So of all the fire, volunteer fire departments in Bu, say what would you say the last 10 years? How many accidents you've had? 13? 13, I guess. 13 and none of them are related to a fire incident. It was rolled ankles. It was your slip trip falls. So stuff that happens anywhere. Right, yeah. You do a fire. No training would, no training at all, would prevent those, right? But they were still documented. And a lot of them were not, you know, serious enough to really warrant anything other than documentation. Now, we've had some, some bad, what did you do there, Bill? I don't know. It's playing with these buttons and stuff. You always do this stuff to me. I don't know what the hell's going on. Sometimes it's a shocker right on the rear. Thank God that thing's not in. So, you guys don't have this, you know, and I mean, this is some hard work. This is some dangerous stuff. This is stuff that I'm not going to do. I'm going to throw Bill into the fire before I go. But, you know, there's no accidents. We've had some pretty nasty fires imbued. And drive by, you know, they're, they're, they're cooking. You guys aren't getting hurt. We have a couple of thresholds that have got hurt. We're not talking about eliminating them. You know, it's just a dangerous job. But, you guys are still ever remarkable safety record. We're going to talk about safety. Now, as far as showing up, tell me, you know, I know we had a fire down my mind place and it was about 20 minutes from the fire department. If everybody was there and ready. But, you guys are imbued. So, let's say you guys get the call. You're a race track. There's a fire over on Wall Street. What's the average response time for you to get to Wall Street? Generally five to seven minutes. Generally, depending on the time of day because we do all have jobs. Right. And race track is a relatively young department. I'm the second oldest member at 48 out of 22 members. So, you know, most of those young, young members have day jobs that they may or may not be able to leave. So, it depends. It could be seven minutes. It could be 10. It could be 12. But, it's pretty quick. It is pretty quick. And nine times out of 10, the crew fire department is going to be just there. Because they're there. Well, they're paid in there. Yeah, they're sitting at the station. They're ready to go. They're ready to go. So, we have to come from our homes or from our work and actually make it here. So, you guys are supporting the mission, basically, usually when it goes up. Yeah, that's always kind of been the idea. That we were going to be support. We were going to come in and do cleanup jobs. Because that's what volunteers can do, right? And they have-- The hot spots, things like that. So, we may make it up. They don't have the staffing to necessarily do it. You know, on a day shift or on a regular shift. They have six guys. Six, maybe seven on a good day. You know, national standards says that they should have 13 on a residential structure. So-- So, you guys would be included in that. We would be the supplement for that 13 to actually make it there. So, if somebody let's say that there's, you know, some insurance company starts denying claims because they said, "Well, this guy, fire could have been put out faster if there was a full crew there." Things like that. The public actually needs these national standards wherever they are. I mean, that's something that should be probably adhered to for a reason? You should. You know, when I'll tell you that our response times are even me personally. I haven't been responding to calls even though I might be available just because of this fight. Like, I don't want to see these guys. I mean, I don't blame it. But I've also noticed for, like, the last-- I mean, even before this fight probably, it seems to, you know, you see on the county budget reports, I don't look off to me. You do. There's a lot of overtime. Yeah. Yeah, that's about 90% of the budget? Well, it was-- yeah. There's some good budget numbers that I think-- there was an overrun, I think it was last year, of like $300,000 on overtime, over budget. And maybe that number is not totally correct. But that's the effect that the overtime is having, right? I mean, we're overrunning budgets. Is that because volunteers are not even being called out? Yes, correct. And I will say that we do listen to the radios. When we hear a fire call go out, we hear almost immediately, even on a small to medium-sized fire, the first thing they're going to do is start the callback. What does that mean? Callback. That means they're going to call in people that are off-shift to backfill the stations. Call them in on overtime. Correct. Yeah. And is this a fairly recent phenomenon where they've stopped calling volunteers? Yeah, for a while there, they were really good with it. There was a couple of the battalion chiefs that had have retired. But they were really good about calling immediately. Like if they came out and they seen smoke, they would call for volunteer department to actually respond. Because they knew that it takes us a minute. Like, especially if it's two or three in the morning, we've got to roll out of bed. If you're old like me, you've got to stop to pee. And then you get to actually start driving to the station. And so that all takes time. So some of those older battalion chiefs were great that they called right away. And now we just start back to 1970, maybe 1980 version. Just somewhere in there? Excluded from it all. Yeah, we're completely excluded. And that's what they want. They want us to feel frustrated. I think that's a personal opinion. I'm going to get a little into the weeds there. But I feel like they want to frustrate us. Osborne, one of his first missions was that he wanted us to stage at the station for gas odor calls. Because gas odors were a hazmat. And according to city ordinance, volunteers weren't supposed to respond on a hazmat. And we'd been doing it since forever. This is year 29 for me. Or it will be year 29. So for all by 28 years before, I was responding on gas odors like everybody else, like every other fire department on the planet. And then he just decided, well, we're going to have the volunteers just stage at their station. And I tried to tell him. I said, that's going to lead to people not wanting to actually respond. Because why would we get up at two in the morning to go stand by at the station? Like, it just is ridiculous. And I think it's just deployed just to frustrate us to the point that we just don't want to be. And I'll tell you that I retire in December. No matter how this vote goes, I retire in December because I'm over frustrated with all of this. And I'm so sick and tired of this stupid fight where all it took was a conversation. We could have sat down at a table and been grownups. But no, no, no. We're going to do this politically. And we're going to try to railroad you and go behind your back. I was getting off on a tangent and I apologize. Well, you are. But I think that's an important hint. As I've told you, I told you about a friend of mine that came from Washington DC. And I just mentioned this sort of feud, you know, six months ago or so. And he looked at me like, it was crazy. He's like, why? Why? And then we were talking, you know, I left him as, oh, I don't remember this sort of feud happening over there. And we're talking Helena. These other cities, volunteers and the professional firefighters get along and seem to work well together. And you were mentioning what's this two-hat thing? Yeah. I won't throw that department under the bus. But I was at another career department. And they were talking about how some of them were volunteers on the side that they're two-hatters, which means that they are both career and their volunteer on the side. And I said, holy cow, that happens here? Because it could never happen in Butte. Like they could never be two-hatters in Butte. You know, And it's a big thing back east, like there's a lot of volunteer fire departments back east that are suburbs of big cities so they'll be on DC fire department and their volunteers in their own little suburb area. But why would they want to? I mean, they might be able to give us valuable information if they're so much better too. I'm just saying, like, this goes back to like we could all train together, like, and if truly, if they want this to go through, why couldn't we have been training together long before now? Well, well, that goes back to the beginning and I talked about House Bill 547, where they were talking about safety and how the volunteers weren't trained. And it was like a week after we found out about House Bill 547, it was making its way through legislature. And the city had some big training that they did, and they were talking about how we were on train. They didn't even invite us to it. So the career fire department did this big giant training. I can't remember what it was now because I think it was out of the moon. But they had this big giant training and then they never even invited a single volunteer department to it. So it's funny how they want to complain about these things, but they don't actually want to be the solution to it. They just want to keep complaining about it and they'd not actually have any grownup solutions to it. They're just like, oh, we're going to point the finger. And then they're going to say, oh, but we're going to be the leaders. Like, that's what they're trying to do now, right? Like they want to take over these departments, which kills me for one, for a couple of reasons. My heart and soul, pride, passion, blood, sweat, and tears, and my own money into this place. Right? Like race track has been almost 30 years of my life where I have tried to build the best possible department I could. This is your neighborhood, too. Somebody told me, yeah, I mean, that's what it is, and it isn't. I moved out of this neighborhood, but I still got my heart. But this department has my heart, right? You know, like, we have my fire safety trailer that's sitting out there. The only reason I got that is because nobody was doing fire prevention when I was a kid. Nobody taught me-- We sat in the parade every year for us, did you like parade? Well, and it makes its rounds. Yeah. I've had that trailer for almost 25 years. I've put tens of thousands of kids through that trailer and I've taught them fire safety. Yeah. It's in the parade, we've made a name for ourselves in other ways, too. I still get recognized as the dancing fireman on a daily. But-- Well, I thought that was back in college. Well, I don't talk about those days anymore. You know, but I did that out of the pride of the community. I didn't want to be going to these fires and seeing families devastated and not having something where I said, well, I did everything I possibly could to stop that from happening. You know what fire department has never used that trailer? Helena Fire has, Boulder Fire has, Dylan Fire has, Deer Lodge Fire has, West Valley and Anaconda has, Opportunity has, Boseman Fire did long ago, Belgrade Fire did, or Central Valley Fire, excuse me. The only one that hasn't ever asked to use that trailer is buttes over both fire. You know, speaking of these things where it's, you know, we're being told it's the apocalypse, we've got volunteers, all this stuff. You mentioned Dylan. Dylan's a pretty decent sized town. How many people work in the professional fire department in Dylan? One. One paid fire chief. It's just the fire chief just the fire chief is everybody else is a volunteer. Everybody else is volunteer. What about a Deer Lodge? That's the same thing. Deer Lodge is all volunteer. I mean, our most towns in Montana, then, you know, last one cities and, but all the other class one cities work with volunteers. Yeah. Well, we can talk about the other consolidated city, county government. Just one. There's only one other one and it's due, or it's Anaconda, Deer Lodge County. Can you know what their fire departments have? What? Independent. They don't have mutual aid agreements. They do. But their volunteer departments have independent. They also have boards of trustees that run those volunteer departments, the districts, right? So that's what is at stake here is our district trustees, our district boundaries are all going to go away. If option one passes, it's not option one. It's unification. Yeah. We're calling it unification, we're calling it termination. Well, the opposite of that is independence, right? We're, you know, the Montana state code annotated is pretty clear on rural fire districts. It's really clear on budget processes, on who has authority, on what that authority actually is within the district boundaries. And for some reason in Butte Silver Boa, we just don't observe that. Now that's also more recent, too, isn't it? I've only been on the department the second time now since 2021, so okay, so probably as long as I've been on the department. Last five years? Yeah. So last five years has been probably nice, but before that did most of the fire departments you have your own independent budgets, you know, have your needs met and all that sort of stuff? No, it's been a long time. It's been ever since called consolidation. Is it? Yeah. So that's when our budgets when disappeared, all of our money doesn't matter where you live, all of the money goes uptown, and then it gets distributed back to the career department from there. And when things were, I'll say maybe semi-good, too, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is when they're pulling money actually out of the tiff, it area, and then you'd get like a little sprinkling here, a little bit of a sprinkling there for stuff that you needed. But it was like absolute dire needs as when you got it. Probably because that's illegal. Yeah. Well, it was a little bit better, what was it? Three director of fire services ago with Jeff Miller as the director. He was a little bit more receptive to if you went up and had needs, like you could get those needs met generally. And we didn't seem to have a problem. I mean, we didn't always agree on fundamental everythings, and we did get into arguments with Jeff a lot, too. But it's nowhere near what this is. You didn't have the doors slammed on you? Yeah. We didn't feel uncomfortable actually going up to station one, you know, because that's where the director of fire services is, even though it's supposed to be the director of all fire services. No, there was two years ago, there was a big meeting at council commissioners meeting. Pact, it was, I mean, Osborne spoke very, very short kind of angry. Jerry spoke, Jerry brothers, but Jerry made a point to say that we all, this isn't a dispute between the firefighters. So we go to a fire, we get along brilliantly. Is that still a case or is that, is this fighting been a road and all that? So how do I say this nicely? We can't really speak to the dynamics of what the department is, but it's, it's markedly gotten worse. Yeah, just, just generally overall, just because of the friction and the fighting. Yeah. And I'm not afraid to say it. I, I think it's because of their command and lack of leadership in, in the department. And see, I think it's a toxic environment myself. I can't, I can't speak to that necessarily, but for example, because you said you weren't going as many calls. Yeah, well, we have nine guys that came out of this department that have gone on to be career firefighters here in view. We've have lots of them have that have gone elsewhere that I've heard from all of those other ones, or a lot of those other ones that have gone elsewhere about this whole fight. The ones that are here in view, out of those not one of them still talks to me. Really? Yeah. Well, you're like a subhuman or something? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, they all forgot where they came from. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're going back to Senator Harvey. Derek came from this department, but he's not the one I'm guessing. Yeah. Derek won't admit it. So they did what's that thing I did doing the standard 20 under 30 or 20 under 40, or whatever. Derek made it in there and I thought, oh, I'm going to read that because I'm pretty sure why, why wouldn't you put your volunteer fire service in there like, yeah, I started off my fire service with the race track volunteer fire department, never mentioned. I was like, if you're, why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you want to promote that you did a community service? Yeah. Like, why is that a bad thing that you're doing a community service? Like, and now it seems like they've all forgot. Well, especially in view, because, you know, if you watch, there's a movie resurrecting Holy Savior, where they were, they're digging, guy wants to dig up the church, you know, the picture that Montana, the picture of the dump truck dump went on the church. Yeah. They want to dig that up and they talked about when there were strikes, when there was bad times. It was a volunteer fire department that kept the communities together and obviously, times are different now. Everyone has a cell phone. Everyone has a car. Yeah. You know, you're, you know, you don't have to even walk to the corner store anymore and but that's what it was. But, but for so long, the volunteer fire departments were, what kept, were the heart of this of every, like, because but was, there was a bunch of small towns and but right. I mean, we're in one of them right now racetrack here. You know where their meterville there's centerville there's Walkerville all these places and the volunteer fire departments were the heart and soul of those like they kept everybody going For some of us that still feels that way. Yeah, like you know, I look around this time. We guys got this nice Christmas display right off The poor Christmas display got destroyed by the windstorm. Oh, did yeah, and I just yeah, I haven't been by there since yeah 17th apparently I need to take it down, but at the same time. It's just been a heartbreak because it's got that was that was harkening back to that goes back meterville days Yeah, the traditions are our phenomenal and we all know those traditions right like I could tell you exactly Racetrack was founded in September 28th 1939 And it's named after the old horse race track that used to be here The archives has some great pictures of this being built and there was nothing but fields and farmlands back behind you You know that's been there their other argument is we're not rule fire departments, but in on the books with the state of Montana We still say we're it's racetrack rule fire district almost all of Montana's rural I mean you look at every government government thing I mean you do realize on USDA rural development for a lot of money I mean, it's you know, we can't say we're not rural and one hand they were rural I mean Montana has rural. Yeah, just wait it But that seems to be I Mean it seems like a ridiculous complaint, but that's Seems to be where we are. Yeah, we get into ridiculous fights when I ran for chief executive before I even announced I was running it was in the fall of 23. I Don't know how volunteer firefighters knew I was gonna run before I told anybody was gonna run But I had volunteer firefighters reaching out to me about this issue and I and I always said we know we're gonna sit down Talk like adults if I win. We'll fix it and we'll fall the law, you know I wasn't saying I'm not gonna bash anybody either side, you know, we're just gonna sit down and figure it out and then Nothing, you know, I obviously I'm sitting here. I didn't win that race So so we so we didn't have that meeting But then the next year all of a sudden you guys get bombarded with was it 50 157 so with that the house 547 547 we get hit by that and everyone tells me they're gonna quit I had so many people I went to you know meetings to say we're done. There's no way we're gonna survive that and I guess now when I see this It went through the the study commission is this just basically 547 on our ballot is it basically the same thing Yeah, cuz they couldn't get it that way I couldn't get that way so they had to come back to do it this way, you know, man That whole issue, so JP lied to all of us basically shocker. Yeah, right right before the election We met with him up at the county commissioners room at the courthouse And it was supposed to be him the county attorney and Zach Osborne only he showed up And he he blew smoke basically, and he's like oh, we're gonna get we're gonna get a meeting together You know Zach and couldn't make it today, but we're gonna get a meeting together, and we're gonna we're gonna do it And he talked for about two hours and didn't come up with anything and then we never had a meeting and then house bill 547 hit And it was in the works at that time already was I'm looking at these dates when Harvey says he's talking to beauty silver bow Yeah, I think you might have got Sandbag you think Cuz JP didn't know about it. Yeah, we'd be the sword his parents grew up and Zach Osborne didn't know anything about it either Well, sorry, but it amazingly that two officials in silver bow county Found out about it the day before it hit the house and they still had nothing on their agenda to do the next day So they drove to Helena and they spent all day up at the Capitol the defend house bill 547 even though they just found out about it It's amazing how that works a commissioner sent me videos of the yelling conversation outside I was embarrassed. I mean, I had legislators that I know from other cities that were telling me about this and When I saw the videos I'm going these are adults. I mean, I don't know what the under I honestly don't understand the underlying room And then you got spouses attacking people on Facebook. It's that's that's getting a bit ridiculous to the whole Facebook thing is ridiculous, but You know, it's it's embarrassing to me for the community Yeah, the the entire community because a member of the House representative said Sounds like butes got a leadership problem a member of the legislature said the governor's sender said one of the senders said Sounds like butes got a leadership problem and then the governor vetoed the bill and basically said Butes to figure it out and find some leaders and what do we do? We don't talk about it. We don't have a sit down discussion about it We don't do anything about it, but then we're going to do a study commission and we're going to get one of our guys on the board I'm sorry. No, I was just going to tag on that it wasn't for lack of asking for that, right? I mean The volunteer side of this whole thing had asked to have those meetings to to do this, right? Yeah, I mean, I wasn't really involved with it at that point But we had documentation to show that we had asked for those meetings to happen and nothing On the on the side of it after that got vetoed I sat down and had a beer with Derek Harvey And I told him I said I feel like this is your mess to clean up And you know what I always thought me and Derek were friends so As a friend, I was like I feel like you need to help clean this up and facilitate an actual meeting And nothing ever happened Like he promised me he's like yeah, yeah, we'll do that. We'll do that and then it'll happen up Well, yeah, and this is basically making sure the meeting will never happen, right this here I mean, yeah, there's the the point of we passed the point of rescue of no point on overturning right there's absolutely no point of return Yeah, so you know I think we you know bill and I know no career firefighters. They sat down on the side They're not going to say anything you know in front of their peers and stuff Yeah, there's a problem. We got communications problem. Maybe there is some training issue We should be training together and all that sort of stuff These things sound to me like you know if you were looking at any other demographic of people at any other place other than but You would put those people together in a room and sit down and say let's let's hash this out and figure out some solutions But you guys are saying do you guys have asked for that that's never happened Yeah, now I remember the requests when they formed the fire advice reformed the fire advisor council now I remember the form we made a deal is because non-disclosure agreements are illegal for government Andrew and two But if you wanted to serve in the committee when you had to sign up An royalty-loathe to butes over bow the entity not the people And a non-disclosure agreement is part of that. Did any of you guys serve in that committee? Yeah, I serve on it Brennan does now too, but Yes, we had an ethics and ethics piece that we got to do and an NDA I honestly don't think I even signed mine so I don't even know And that was what the man and butes over bow demanded you sign the NDA. Yeah. Oh, yeah It's funny. I had a foyer too about all NDAs but silver bow is signed and they said they don't sign in the NDAs But of course I had the picture of that. I knew that it existed. Yeah But probably still have my head home if you want another copy Yeah, and the foyer they said well, we don't do that. Well, yeah, they do and you know what you got to get on there So what sort of stuff? I mean now you can't do you guys deal with personnel issues? Are you firing people on this committee? Nope because that's the exception and state law So you're not you don't supervise anybody that you're firing Does anybody on that committee? No because they wouldn't bring you know if there's a firefighter engage in a misconduct or doing anything We're with panties or something like that You guys wouldn't be the review committee for that would you nope? Okay, nope in fact the first meeting we were We were in there at we were told this was it it was that it was an advisory committee only and that Suggestions there Could be brought up could be just ignored could whatever we want or whatever Wanted they wanted to have happen up there would be whatever they did anyway because it was an advisory committee only Yeah, and the commission would have to deal with personnel issues and going to close session But that wouldn't be your purview. Yeah. All right, so I mean, has there been any talk on the advice on the secret advisory committee with NDAs? I mean if you talked about anything like having this meeting in resolve before we get to this point where they're trying to you know cut the legs out from Under you. Nope. So is it basically just superficial to buy time to whack you Is that it? I mean, I mean that is that is a total I guess I would speak on the fire advisory committee. We have solved at zero problems since I've I've been I guess asked to represent for fire council Everything that we've tried to address Has been pretty much systematically shut down For one reason or another we're wrong That's not what that says I don't know some of the other or like or we'll start making progress on one week and then a different Career guy shows up and says no, that's not how I want to do it and it just goes away And it's very obvious that it's law sided as far as any voting would happen, right? They've pretty much stacked the deck. For whatever reason, we don't have a lot of friends uptown, the volunteers in general don't have a lot of friends in the city. I got to stop you right there. This is completely unfair because when you get, when you're talking about the courthouse, the castle on Grand Street, the people have viewed outside of the castle don't have any friends in the castle. So let's not make yourself special. Anyway. I guess I would clarify, most of what we're trying to do is for our communities, right? For me, it's the big community, racetrack community, rocker community. If we're bringing stuff up, it's for the betterment of our fire protection. It's, you know, like, I don't know with the NDA if I can say anything, but some of the things that we have brought up, we thought made sense. We talked about them before the meeting, and they were, you know, just systematically. No, we're not doing that. That's not our purview. But yet on the other side, we're talking about moving equipment from one volunteer station to another. So, you know, the disparity there just doesn't make any sense to us, and I would love for somebody to explain that to us. Yeah. No, I think the public deserves some explanation on this too, but, of course, we're not going to get them. And, you know, we've got, we've got a few weeks before ballots go out, and people are supposed to make an informed decision. And I saw there was a thing last week where a commissioner who now cares out of the blue wants the county attorney to draft an interpretation to answer questions, but, I mean, if nobody's asked the insurance commissioner how this is going to affect, you know, insurance rates, things outside of volunteers and fired by how it's going to affect taxpayers, nobody's asked those. I mean, the county attorney has been involved in drafting this and all these discussions already, hasn't he? Yeah. Yep. Does he attend the fire committee, fire advisory committee meetings? He attended a couple right, right at the beginning, but then didn't show up anymore. So it's kind of a very to him for asking him to write an interpretation of things that he's not even involved in and come up with a solution that only has -- now, my understanding, I think you guys, and Jim Fisher said, you know, last week that he proposed a third option that was ruled out. Do you guys know why? Why that was ruled out by the study commission? I don't know why. That study commission seemed to be also stacked against the volunteers with feats over both fire having a representative on there that professionally probably should have recused himself whenever the fire stuff came up, but didn't and was very outspoken throughout. And you're going back to the county attorney that sat in on most of those, too, that he seemed to be pretty outspoken about the volunteer fire department, says, well, or all the fire stuff when it came up on that study commission. So -- Outspoken, how, like, against? Well, he threw out his opinions about how the one that really got me was what we've all worked for bad bosses, so if they don't like their boss, I guess, they can just quit. That doesn't seem like he was telling -- because he went to the same meetings I did when I was running for office when he was running for office. And he never said anything like that during those meetings. Yeah. Well, you can look all those up on Facebook and you can probably find it. It was one of the last ones where he said that, well, the volunteers might not like the director of fire services, but we've all worked for bad bosses. Volunteers don't work for bad bosses. We just leave. You work for boss if you're depending on your shack. Yeah. It's a bad boss. Yeah, you stick around. Yeah. You stick around. Or you stick around for a program. Yeah. You know, somebody said, well, how do you know that you got a good volunteer fire department? I said, I can discipline people -- well, what do you mean? In my 30 years, I've had two disciplinary actions. Both of them were suspensions. The only thing that those firefighters could do was be it training. They could not participate in anything that we did outside of the department. One of those was a six-month suspension with a demotion. And the other one was a year-long. Those two firefighters stayed -- did they correct their behavior? They corrected their behavior and they stayed through their entire punishment. That's how you know that you have a good program that people want to stay no matter what. I mean, that bias because that's this department and I put my heart and soul into it. So I am a little bit biased by it, but there's very few volunteer fire departments that can say that -- they can say that they gave out a punishment and those firefighters stayed to go completely through that punishment. Especially a year-long. The majority of paid guys are probably quit with the year suspension like that. Yeah, if you're not able to respond on calls or do any other activities, yeah, they're probably like what is. So the ballots come out a couple of weeks probably, right? Yeah. You get in the mail and I guess what to say here, it's not really exactly clear. I think a lot of people are going to know. Well, I know my dad's going to call me when he gets his -- what does this mean? But like what the ballot says here is, "For fire services to operate as a unified system under the authority of Butes Silverbow County, including both Career and Volunteer Departments, the City County shall have a full operational administrative and budgetary authority over both Butes Silverbow County Fire Department and the Volunteer Fire Departments." In addition, a volunteer fire coordinator shall be appointed by the Volunteer Fire Departments and appointing it you there to me. And the other one is four, and they both say four, which is going to confuse a lot of people, right? They're just going to confuse you. You know, because you can't just say vote four. My four are against. People are going to go and they're not known and people aren't going to read all that. They just want to see four are against, like, you know, whatever. But the four says, "For all volunteer fire departments and rural fire districts located within the City County to be removed from the charter and shall operate independently of the City County in accordance with the laws of the state of Montana." And that would basically be to keep it as it is. Or was it not? No, that completely changes things. Okay. So either so it's kind of a poison pill for you guys. No, so let me actually do point for clarification first. So this is actually the sub-option. There's going to be a, there's going to be a, there's going to be a, I just saw that on. Yeah, no, there's going to be a wrong way. There's going to be a option right before this that says vote four maintaining the existing charter language regarding fire department. And that would be keeping status quo. Or the next option is going to be four changing the existing charter language regarding the fire department. And then you'll get out, get into this option. Okay. So go ahead. But to unlock that one, you have to vote. The first vote, which is pretty complicated, right, so we're, I can't follow up on my answer. We're going to be three deep into this. You have to vote to open the charter in the first place, right? Exactly. So hopefully people do. And we get an adult in charge with the city manager. Or did I say that, like, yeah, that's the gentleman said out there, the county attorney wrote these up. And that's not the role of the county attorney to come up with the language after the recommendations from the commission. However, I, you know, just that whole process, we were watching the process too. And I, I guess I'm not super familiar with it because this is the first time I've had to go through anything like this. But it seemed a lot like there were no answers until the very end. And then we hurried up and drafted some stuff that, that used the word extinguish before any of the public got to see it. And now it's on the ballot. Well, let's see the word and Derek Harvey dissolved, I don't know, but, but they were, they were selling snake oil, right, because that's, that's my opinion on it and how, because, you know, if that was early on in House Bill 547, then we love our volunteers, we love our volunteers. And then all of a sudden, we're going to extinguish trustees powers. So I don't, those things don't jive in my mind. And I guess that's why we're here today. Well, can we get into some of the misnomers that have been, please, flying around, like our district trustees, get a pick and choose what kind of fire response we get in our fire district. That's not true. You still have mutual or both fire coming in. It's considered a mutual aid. You still have art departments responding. What our trustees do is they elect our chiefs. They are supposed to be in charge of our budget, but we don't technically have a budget. So really, the powers of our trustees aren't that, they don't have that much pull, but the IFF seems to be loving to throw that out on Facebook that our trustees have all this pool. And I love their Facebook posts because they're hysterical that they have pictures of all nine volunteer fire departments, or they say things like, "Narren volunteer departments and nine different opinions, they haven't listened to our opinion in 50 years." I don't understand what, well, it's a propaganda, it's a total propaganda piece, and they keep thrown it out there. I mean, it's so ridiculous to me that it's almost like the carpenter union going after habitat for humanity, or Walmart employees going after the food bank. We'll accept you know. - You're not getting paid. - Yeah, so my very first fire call ever that I was actually allowed to respond on, I had my hands slapped like I was a nine-year-old child 'cause I reached for a ladder on a career fire engine. Somebody said, "Hey, grab a ladder." So I ran back to the closest truck, which happened to be a career truck, reached up to grab it, had my hands slapped and said, "Don't touch my truck, you scab." And not so nice language. And like I said earlier, not to be a month. (laughing) I do go by and play, but I don't think that word means what you think it means. - When there's not a worse word, you'd call somebody either. - There's not a worse word, it's terror. I come from a union family. I come from generations of plumbers and they were plumbers union and they were a hardcore plumber union. This department was founded on hardcore plumbers. The last, well, two chiefs before me, we're all in the plumbers union. These guys were all, that's how I ended up in racetrack, is because our families were all intertwined. So I was here because this was the plumbers union kind of family. So I understood that, that scab was a bad thing, but scab is somebody that's getting paid. Stealing a job, stealing a job. We're not stealing a job. We're not getting paid. We're doing a community service. Like, you're gonna, you're gonna call me that for doing a community service. So. - Is that tied down? Or is it still, you still guys get that? - Well, they don't say it, but the whole meaning behind this might as well say it. - They're just saying it, but without using the actual-- - Yeah, I mean the IFF is going hardcore on Facebook, right? Putting up all these posts. Why does the IFF care? Oh, that's right, because if they get rid of the volunteers, then they can go and ask you for more tax money. And then they can blame it on the volunteer? - Well, the volunteers left. - How many volunteer firefighters are there in Silver Book County? - I think the numbers are down a little bit. I think we're at about 125 maybe. - Yeah. - Has it dropped off a lot in the last couple of years? - Oh. - I just, I don't know how worded, we can't even recruit in this environment, right? I mean, people, we've had people show up for a couple of meetings, go to a fire, and they're like, I don't want anything to do with that, you know? - You guys are being talked about by, you know, on Facebook, like you're the keystone cops. - Right. - And, you know, I mean, it's, you know, we have this fight, I remember Bill said, our last podcast I talked about, he's talking about who'd rather come, come, you know, carry him out and all this sort of stuff. I'm like, the first one that shows up, I'm gonna really appreciate that person. And I don't, I don't care if they're uniforms pressed. - Even if he's got a Cub's hat on. (laughing) - So, but we're talking about the general public, right? The general public just sees a fire truck. - Yeah. - They don't see the name on the side. Nor do they care. - They just see if there's the one. - Yeah, put the fire out. - Put the fire out. - They don't care if it's water or whatever. - They don't care if it's career, as long as you're there to help get their problem solved, that's all they care. And by eliminating us or getting rid of us, that takes a giant part of that away. And it takes protection away from the community. And it ultimately hurts the taxpayers. I said it before they started. I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone that the volunteers are the only ones that seem to care about the taxpayers. And what the taxpayers are going to end up paying. And how they're going to end up getting screwed. Like why aren't our county officials caring about that? Oh, that's right, because they get more money. And I'm going to tell you, you know, just to get ahead of what's coming next is we're going to be villainized or they're going to say that we're fear mongering or using fear tactics to say that we're quitting. That isn't it, but when they use words like control, like extinguishment, well, you know, any position that's a volunteer, how do you control a volunteer back to two E's example? If it's a world class organization that you want to be a part of, that's control, right? I mean, but in the sense they're using it, it's we just want to have control over something else, right? I, you know, and I'm even going to go a step further 'cause I've heard this since from multiple different people. And it's second hand, so take it for what it's worth, but we've heard that even the lowest level firefighter at any of the career stations get told they have more decision making power on a fire call than a volunteer does. A volunteer chief does. You know, it's the authority for the fire district is written into state law. They choose not to even recognize it here, so. - Well, and that's going back a little bit to that toxic environment. Words got around that I'm retiring in December. And one of our former members told one of our current members that can't really retire 'cause it's a hobby. - Oh, wow. - So if that isn't the most unprofessional thing for somebody to say, one, I collect a retirement at the end of this. So anything that you offer retirement from is a retirement. But anybody that knows me knows that I've never taken this more than anything other than a job. It's a second job that pays terrible. - Yeah, it's passion, yeah. - Yeah, it's a love. And it's a love for this place. It's a love for the community. It's a love for these guys, all of these guys. I know that you're only here in three of us, but there's a whole bunch of them here. - Yeah, and I mean, the experience too though, me 125 firefighters or so. There's over 1,000 years of firefighting experience there. - Oh, easily. - Maybe even two or three. - Even being, you know, the second oldest in this department, even just this department. If I'm talking just the guys in here, we have over 100 years of experience, just with the guys that are still in here, and me being the oldest at 48. So there's a ton of experience, there's a ton of guys, and just like, you're a sports guy, so I'm gonna use this analogy. It's just like college football, right? College football on the pros. Some of the best firefighters I've ever seen were volunteers, just like some of the best football players I've ever seen were college football players. And then they hit the pros and then they weren't as good, right? 'Cause there's, and I'm not saying that's the case here, so it can be wrong, I'm just saying that there's, there's a level of passion of doing this, and there's a level of heart that you can't replace, and our heart is in these buildings. That believe that are not, right? We're the maroon thing. We're the only ones that have the maroon fire trucks. Everything I own has sevens on it, 'cause we're home of engine 777 and squad 777. You start taking away those identities and people just leave, 'cause we don't wanna be a part of that. They had a lawsuit going on, and they wanted some of our turnouts. So I gave 'em two sets of turnouts, and they went up the station one. Turnouts, what about that? Our gear, so they were looking at the carcinogens that our gear holds in 'em. As a lawsuit, they're filing against these manufacturers, and the lawyers warned 'em, and they said, "We'll replace 'em." I said, "All right." The back of our coats say racetrack on 'em. So those two coats that I gave them said racetrack. When I got two coats back, they say, "Bewd FD." They don't say racetrack anymore. I won't wear those coats. I won't put those coats into service. I don't have pride in "Bewd FD." "Bewd FD" doesn't even exist. I don't even know what "Bewd FD" is. Maybe they go to "Bewd Count." 'Cause in 1977, in consolidation, it should be "Bewd Silver Bowl" fire, not. - "B-S-D" yeah. - They got 'em from that "Bewd County" in California. - "Bewd Fire Department" yeah. So I don't want to wear those coats. My pride is in the namesake. So you start talking about taking away those, and yes, we leave, because we lose our pride. Brandon's is in "Bewd FD." Jonathan's in "Rocker," kind of racetrack. (laughing) - You know, there's some bull of our guys here. There's home aftertons. Like, those are our pride. These are, I could tell you everything about this neighbor. My wife will not drive through this neighborhood with me. 'Cause if I drive through your wife, we had a gas order there. We had a fire there. We hit that hydrant there. Like I could tell everything about this, you know, 'cause the last 30 years, this has been part of my giant part of my life. - So, all right, you know, what is, you know, if people are concerned, people like me, I mean, I would just want to contact the state auditor and ask these questions too, because, you know, how is this going to affect? I'm concerned as a rate payer. I get, you know, the way they've jacked up our property taxes for other things, picking fake, picking fake breaks on the street, all these. You know, wonderful things that we do. That could be used over almost anything else, but, you know, but silver bows in acting policies, shoving data centers down our throat to raise our power rates. Now we're talking about this with our insurance rates. I mean, they're just trying to get rid of the people of Butte, but how do we, you know, as voters, what is the decision to protect our pocketbooks as voters individually and have some coverage to make sure that we can get insurance? As far as the ballot, is that what you're asking? Yes. So, for the first vote, because there's a series of three that need to happen for this, the first vote is for adoption of the revised charter form of government as proposed by the Butte Solar Bo local government study commission. So that unlocks the rest of the votes. The second vote, if the revised charter is adopted, how should the fire services be governed? And then you would be four, changing the existing charter language regarding the fire department. And then onto the third vote, you would be four volunteer fire departments and rural fire districts located within the city county to be removed from the charter and shall operate independently of the city county in accordance with the laws of the state of Montana. So you'd be like every other volunteer fire department in the state of Montana? We would fall under state law, correct? All the other 360 volunteer fire departments in the state of Montana. Wait a minute. I mean, according to what I see from the IFFF, we're all going to burn down. So the whole state has burned down around us. We're just unaware of that. I mean, unless Budesville was going to try to take over all the volunteer fire departments, I don't know. It kind of seems that way. And so that's the sensible way that we are like everybody else, not to clear, and we're special, and don't destroy our opportunity to have insurance. Essentially. And save a ton of tax money because if we're gone, you're going to catch it in the back. How many of the 125 will be here this time next year if the ballot goes against you guys? Maybe a handful. I'll speak for me, it'd be one last. I'll speak for me. It's already going to be one last. So it's going to basically kill the volunteer fire department. Yeah. Well, I mean, essentially, it has hurt us a lot already. Just like these get some recruitments down. It's hard to bring people into this environment. So if it goes away one, though. So if it goes exactly like you just described there, everyone boasts in those three options like that. Is there a chance to build us back up? I mean-- Oh, absolutely. Because then we'd actually be grown-ups. We'd have to be grown-ups, right? So we'd actually have to sit down and have grown-up conversation. And tell the next legislature anyway, right? Well, but either way. So we already have a solution. We have a fire count. All other counties have these fire councils. And I went to another county's fire council not too long ago. And I was dumbfounded because their career fire department was there. Their volunteers were there. The sheriff was there. The ambulance services were there. The tow companies were there. Like, they had all of these people involved. And when it came to hard decisions, that's where they made them. And they sat down and talked. And they have things called mutual aid agreements, which but still revolve we've never done, like legit mutual aid agreements, where that's where our trustees come in. Our trustees would sit down. They would write out mutual aid agreement. And then but still revolve fire would sign it. And you know what? If that was the case, because we're probably going to want them to still run medicals, then we would pay them to actually respond into our fire districts to do that. So it's not a lose-lose. It could be a very much a win-win. That we all get what we want. And we all are able to still exist. And it benefits the tax payers. Like, I don't know why that seems to be so hard to-- We should address some of the stuff that I've seen on Facebook, too, that we're going to double tax everybody. Or we're going to tax our districts on top of what Newton Silverboat does. That's, you know, I guess, ultimately that's something for attorneys to figure out. And however, they write that. But essentially, the way we read it, and I'll speak for all of us, our opinion is that those taxes are already due to those fire districts. They were taken by Bute Silverboat at consolidation. It never was resolved. So it's not an additional tax that would be levied on people. You guys just get-- Yeah. Currently Bute Silverboat hardly gets all of our money. We don't get any money. So look, you can see the ceiling. There's a crack over there, too, from where the roof was leaking. Still is leaking. Took me five years to get a roof on here. Took me four years to get my internet fixed. These are the things that are our issues, right? That we can't seem to get any attention to. So the volunteers are already being neglected. So yeah, the double taxation is ridiculous. Well, especially when we got things like the first respond to reimbursement fee being ignored. Yeah. Well, and they're already getting the tax money from, say, this fire district. So all they have to do is figure out what taxes come from this fire district, and it goes to the appropriate account, not all of it into one giant one. And that opinion also came out in 1987 when the state attorney general made a ruling that butelvo illegally took the budgets away from the volunteers, and that it should be returned. That was in 1987. And submitted it to the county attorney at the time of butelvo. And that never happened. So even though the state attorney general came up with that ruling, that still didn't happen. Because we're beautiful. We're different. It's got to be special. So before we go into renter one more time, the options people want to vote for the volunteers. Because I think-- because this is-- I'm confused as all hell. I know a lot of people are going to be confused. So if you want to support the volunteers, keep it-- you know, how would you vote? All right. So like we said, it's a set of three. The first one is going to be for adoption of their eyes charter form of government as proposed by the butelvo local government study. And that's what unlocks all the other options throughout for the rest of the whole ballot. The next option is what's going to unlock the fire piece. So we'd be for changing the existing charter language regarding the fire department. And the last piece here, and this is where we're really after, is for all volunteer fire departments and rural fire districts located within the city county to be removed from the charter and shall operate independently of the city county in accordance with the laws of the state of Montana. OK. So what boils down to is we really just want to follow state law. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. And you know, I see these things that were the unions kind of harassing you guys and the new FOIA request and all that stuff. Now, I was told a few different places. You guys actually requested to join the union, too, didn't you? Years ago, we did hoping to resolve some of these issues back in the day. We even said that we'd pay union dues out of our own pockets if they let us join. And they absolutely refused that volunteers can't-- even if we were paying union dues, volunteers can't. So they already know you're not scams with your going to call you scams. Yeah. Yeah. Or treat us like them. Yeah. Or like it's a hobby. Sorry about what you're doing. Well, guys, anything else we should have before we go would have been here for almost-- No, I appreciate you guys giving us a plan. Yeah, it seems like your phones are-- sees a lot of phones going off. Would be great way to end it if you guys had it run out, too. Just for effect here. I wish that's what it was. You know, like I said, I feel like I'm talking to one half of a divorce parent situation or because I love and respect so many of the guys on the career force and same with the volunteers. Anybody who's signing up to Will and to come into a burning building to rescue me, if they have to, I have nothing but respect for. I just thank you guys for what you do and hopefully things go the way you want it to. Bill, don't give me wrong. We also have a lot of respect for those guys, too. Yeah. Oh, of course, yeah. Just some of their leadership at this point is just nobody seems to want to step up. Yeah. When you have a leadership vacuum, problems happen. Yeah. And that's what's exactly what happened. I guess we should have voted for you. I figured a bear's fed would have. I don't know. I did. But that's what I'm just saying. Best favorite did Bill is that, not, not, you know. Eric, would you want anything to say if there we go? No, no. I appreciate you guys trying to explain this to us and going back in a little history, disappointed at the way that this has been framed, that hasn't been transparent and really on the up and up. As we got to this point, the 547 and, you know, I hate to say nice things about Greg Giaforte, but Boycher looks like VDW and that was the right thing to do. And you know I'll make sure you guys can have this broken clocks right once more. Yeah, yeah, and You know I already emailed this to a couple you when I got this this drunk file and I have to you guys can share it But yeah, see the reasoning that Harvey is so when they say our girl isn't to dissolve volunteer fire departments and see that This appears to be exactly what it is. And that's where it started Yeah, I never thought I'd ever have to send a thank you letter to Cheat and forter, but I dare you know You You You You