Oconto County wants its employees who serve as volunteer firefighters and EMS workers to know their work is appreciated.
The board voted 27-1 on March 20 to continue paying those workers in the rare occasions when they’re called away during their regular hours.
Shelly Schultz, the county human resources director, told the board she recently received an inquiry about whether the county should pay its volunteers who have to leave because of a major call.
“We really didn’t have a policy for Oconto County, and I can’t just make that policy, so we decided to bring it forward,” Schultz said.
A review of nine other counties found that most require their employees to clock out when they receive a call. Marinette County does pay its volunteers, but then they have to sign over any pay they receive for the call from the fire or ambulance service.
“Our philosophy as department heads is that obviously it’s a huge value to our community and (the number of) volunteers is going lower and lower for some of our municipalities,” Schultz said. “This was a way that we thought Oconto County could support our volunteers and go above and beyond what some other counties do.”
The proposal received the endorsement of the board’s administration committee, which brought the resolution to the full board.
“If they have to come in late due to being on a fire call or EMS run, or if they have to leave work for that, we would pay them their base wage while they are out,” Schultz said. “We’re not talking about a lot (of money). It’s rare that they get the big call during the day — we’re not talking about lift assists or something like that, we’re talking about some of these major fires or incidents that would require a few of our people to be able to leave if their department head or supervisor allow them to leave.”
Supervisor Elizabeth Holman cast the lone dissenting vote, saying she didn’t like the resolution’s wording that the fiscal impact was “minimal” but “unknown.” She also noted that eight of the other nine counties do not pay their employees who respond to emergency calls.
Schultz said because the employees’ wages and salaries are a budgeted line item, there is no extra cost to the county. She also asked that workers not be required to reimburse any money they earn from a call during county work hours.
“It would be an administrative nightmare, especially because some of them only get paid like once a year; some don’t get paid at all,” Schultz said. “It would be too hard to distinguish that that one hour was due to their leaving Oconto County, do you know what I mean?”
Supervisor Bart Schindel said he has been on the Oconto Falls Fire Department for 40 years and estimated he might have been called off his regular job 10 times during those four decades.
“So once every four years for one day is minimal when you look at it,” Schindel said. “And Oconto Falls gets a lot of calls — once every four years would be very minimal.”
The new policy would only be required in rare instances like a major fire or a mass casualty incident, Schindel said.
Schultz said department heads have said it’s not really an issue.
“They’ve never not allowed someone to go; there’s never been an issue up to this point at all,” she said. “It was just we needed to have a policy so that we knew how to handle it.”
wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com
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