CLIFFORD — After six months of growing tensions between town leaders and firefighters in Clifford, a new effort will be undertaken to try to resolve the differences.
A committee from the Indiana Volunteer Firefighters Association has agreed visit the town of 235 residents, located northeast of the Columbus Municipal Airport, to arbitrate contractual differences, town board president Danny James said.
But James said he has not received confirmation that representatives of the Clifford Volunteer Fire Department will participate in such talks this month, much less agree to abide by an arbiter’s decision or recommendation.
Multiple calls made to Clifford Fire Chief Donnie Everroad have not been returned.
The fire department is requesting that the town pay the organization $4,000 a year or find another department to provide fire protection, James said.
The 19-member department is currently receiving $2,500 each year to provide firefighting services for the town, James said.
That’s more than the $1,700 the Elizabethtown Volunteer Fire Department receives annually to provide firefighting services for its community of 515 residents, twice the size of Clifford, Elizabethtown council member Fred Barnett said.
Most funding for the Clifford volunteer fire department comes through the office of the Flat Rock Township Trustee. The department has received $31,500 annually through the trustee’s office for about 20 years, trustee Lisa Moore said.
James said the town has an eight-year contract dated April 7, 2014 that requires Clifford volunteers to provide the town with fire protection through 2021.
But firefighters claim that contract is null and void because it was neither notarized nor signed by two representatives of each party, James said.
The 2014 agreement also does not contain exact amounts of compensation from the town to the department, the town board president said.
As a result of the dispute, the town board has been denied the use of Clifford’s fire station on East Poplar Street for official government meetings and other business, James said. Lacking its own municipal facility, the town board has utilized the firehouse as a civic and community center for decades.
Such disagreements in small towns occur from time to time.
Just a few years ago, there was a dispute between council members and volunteer firefighters in the neighboring town of Hope, six miles east of Clifford.
But tensions were significantly reduced when the Hope Town Council provided the department with a 9.2-percent increase in early 2016. At the time, council member Ohmer Miller received credit from both parties for his efforts to resolve the dispute.
What is happening in Clifford now is similar to what happened in Hope, Miller said. The dispute is the result of two different organizations serving their community that have different needs and desires, he said.
Communications breakdowns occur because neither side in the dispute is willing to make concessions, Miller said.
Miller said he was only able to start breaking the ice in Hope by meeting on a one-to-one basis with each fire department official and council members.
After giving each person the opportunity to express their needs and desires, Miller said he looked for common ground between the two sides.
As both parties eventually realized in Hope, town leaders and firefighters in Clifford need to realize no one gets everything they want, and serving the community must remain the top priority, Miller said.
A variety of issues not related to the contract have been expressed by one or both parties that range from allegations of improperly tagged fire trucks to last December’s termination of Clifford town marshal Charlie DeWeese, who is also an officer with the fire department.
Miller said he hopes the two parties in Clifford realize leadership and fire protection are both important to local residents, and that the town and fire department find a way to compromise, he said.
