The city of Herculaneum soon will take over control of the Herculaneum Fire Department.
The Herculaneum Board of Aldermen voted 5-0 Nov. 2 to assume ownership of the fire department assets, effective Jan. 1.
“We’re giving them $1,” City Administrator Jim Kasten said.
The department, which organized in 1951 as an independent governmental unit recognized by the state, will disband, and the city will take over management of the department after the first of the year, Kasten said.
The department primarily provides fire protection service to older portions of the city, as well as a part of Providence subdivision.
Parts of the city that were annexed later are in the Dunklin Fire Protection District, an independent agency that levies a property tax to its residents.
The city has been funding the Herculaneum Fire Department, under a year-to-year contract, since the city was incorporated in 1972.
Kasten said the current contract, for about $215,000, runs from July 1 to June 30, 2021, so the city will pay about half of that amount before taking over the department.
The department is run by a three-member board, with Fire Chief Kevin Baker serving as the president. The board chooses its own members. It pays for equipment, upkeep, audits, salaries and insurance for Baker, its lone paid employee. He has been the chief since 2017.
The department also has 11 volunteer firefighters.
Kasten said the benefit of taking over the department for residents is cost certainty.
“We’ll have the benefit of knowing how every expense has been arrived at and paid,” Kasten said. “It’s not that there’s been a problem in the past, but we’re looking to the future.”
In June, Herculaneum voters approved a 1-cent property tax increase to add full-time firefighters to the Herculaneum Fire Department and police officers to the Herculaneum Police Department.
“We’re hoping that, depending on how the sales tax comes in and if we can experience some growth, we can make that three firefighters and three police officers,” Kasten said.
He said the city soon will interviewing for the additional firefighters and police officers, with hopes to hire them after the first of the year.
Adding more full-time firefighters means buying more insurance policies.
“There’s power in numbers and we hope to get more and better insurance policies,” Baker said.
Kasten said Baker’s benefits also will be assumed by the city under its employee retirement system.
He said he believes Baker is being paid about $60,000 a year, and that once he is an official city employee, his pay won’t go down, but may increase depending on the duties he will be assigned.
Ward 2 Alderman Chris Baker, a volunteer with the department and the brother of Kevin Baker, abstained from the vote.
“When it comes to voting on fire department issues, I try to keep myself out of them so it doesn’t look like a conflict of interest,” Chris Baker said.
He said absorbing the fire department should net some cost savings.
“It saves our citizens some money for administrative work for an organization like that,” Chris Baker said. “It’s not going to be millions of dollars, but it will be $10,000 to $15,000.”
Kevin Baker said none of the signage on the firetrucks or firehouse will have to change.
“The citizens won’t see a difference,” he said. “It’s really a formality and hopefully savings to them in the long run.”
The city will take ownership of the department’s firehouse, 151 Riverview Plaza Drive, which was built by the Doe Run Co. in 2008 and donated to the department.
The department was founded nearly 70 years ago by a dozen men from VFW Post 5168 in Herculaneum following a fire on Christmas Day 1947, when the old Herculaneum Public School building burned down.
Before that, workers from the St. Joe Lead Co. (now Doe Run) provided fire protection to the area using six two-wheeled hose carts scattered around the town.
Mayor Bill Haggard’s father, Casey Haggard, was one of the original 12 members. Bill Haggard served as the department’s chief for 35 years before stepping down in 2018. He joined the department as a charter member of its junior firefighter program in 1965.
He declined to comment on the city’s takeover of the department.