Quorum court to vote on fate of Fire Department

Officials raise safety, service concerns

FORT SMITH -- The Sebastian County Quorum Court is expected to consider later this month whether to eliminate the Jenny Lind Volunteer Fire Department from the county's fire protection system.

The volunteer Fire Department, which now covers the district including the unincorporated community between Fort Smith and Greenwood, took a crucial step Tuesday to continue operations when it elected a new chief to direct the department to better cooperate with neighboring departments.

A three-man Quorum Court committee composed of James Butler, Johnny Hobbs and Shawn Looper met Feb. 28 and called for the Fire Department to change its management, among other conditions, or face dissolution. Other conditions, Butler said, included coming up with a reorganization plan, updating its nonprofit status and joining the Sebastian County Fire Association.

The committee gave the department until the next Quorum Court meeting, scheduled for March 21, to meet those conditions. If it can't, the Quorum Court's justices of the peace will consider a proposed ordinance that would assign fire protection coverage for the south portion of the county to eight districts, leaving out Jenny Lind.

If that happens, the territory currently covered by Jenny Lind would be taken over by the four volunteer fire departments surrounding Jenny Lind: White Bluff/Rye Hill; Excelsior, Mount Zion and Palestine (EMP); Greenwood Rural; and Bonanza City.

David Hudson, the county judge for Sebastian County, said that since the committee meeting the Jenny Lind Fire Department has joined the fire association, which is necessary to be eligible for county sales tax appropriations, and has updated its nonprofit status in order to be allowed to collect dues from residents in its district.

About 15 Fire Department members met Tuesday night at the fire station, where Jenny Lind's Fire Chief Charles Cossey announced his resignation, leaving the department he had served for 42 years.

His son Assistant Fire Chief Shawn Cossey and training coordinator Dean Allison also stepped down as required by the committee.

"I took time away from my family and my business to keep this going, and they do me like this," Charles Cossey said after the meeting.

The remaining members of the department elected Brian Allison as the new chief and Steve Ritter as the assistant chief.

Several other members of the department resigned after the meeting.

Allison said after Tuesday's meeting that he was unsure of the department's next move. "I have to see who's left," he said.

Hudson said it was the lack of Jenny Lind's cooperation with neighboring departments in training and mutual aid, and concerns over safety that prompted the county to call for a change in leadership.

He said the neighboring departments had doubts about the safety and reliability of the Jenny Lind department.

"We have had incidents in the past with the Jenny Lind Fire Department that questions the effectiveness and the safe mutual and automatic aid to our department," White Bluff/Rye Hill Assistant Fire Chief Ronnie Hisaw said at a Feb. 21 Quorum Court meeting.

Noel Yowell, chief of the EMP Volunteer Fire Department, said at the meeting that it had replaced Jenny Lind as the automatic aid department for the Greenwood Volunteer Fire Department.

He said there were safety issues with Jenny Lind taking the wrong equipment to a fire or having equipment that was not operational.

In a Feb. 17 memorandum to Quorum Court members, Hudson wrote that in meetings with the fire association in January, association members involved in mutual aid with Jenny Lind said they had no confidence in the Jenny Lind Volunteer Fire Department.

Discussed in those meetings, Hudson wrote, were complaints about the lack of Jenny Lind's collaborative firefighter training with other departments, participation in water delivery system training, lack of effective backup, and poor working relationships between Jenny Lind and neighboring departments for fire scene command and control.

State Desk on 03/12/2017

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