The Jenkintown Borough Fire Commission met Wednesday, February 8 to discuss the future of its Pioneer and Independent fire companies.
Borough Council with the support of Chief Lynch ultimately decided to consolidate the companies into one Borough entity.
Leadership from both companies have been in talks for years to unify organizationally by creating standard operating procedures and training requirements shared by both companies.
“The meeting was about presenting a recent report and taking proactive steps. We’ll need to build out the leadership structure. Ken Lynch will remain the chief, and our other firefighters and personnel will fill out the remaining leadership positions,” Christian Soltysiak, Vice President of Borough Council and Chair of Public Safety, said. “There is no lack of service or threat of a lack of safety.”
The meeting included a discussion of the Borough’s 1996 pumper truck.
“The other result of that meeting was our 1996 pumper truck which is Pioneer’s possession had some issues, and it has been taken out of commission. It’ll have another inspection and we’ll decide what to do from there,” Soltysiak said.
From Borough Council’s announcement:
It is the responsibility of Jenkintown Borough Council to provide fire services to the Borough. For over 100 years, these services have been provided by two separate volunteer fire companies (Pioneer and Independent). There is an ordinance identifying them as equal parts of the Jenkintown Fire Department, aligning to one Fire Chief (alternating from each company), but they have operated separately in many ways since their founding.
In an effort to examine the functionality of a Fire Department comprised of two separate houses and understand the path into the future at a time when the number of active volunteers dwindles across the Country, Jenkintown Borough Council commissioned a full study in 2016. One of the primary recommendations to come out of the study was the need to regionalize or consolidate the two fire companies. Consolidation would ensure financial efficiency and operational effectiveness while still maintaining the safety of the Borough.
Since 2016, leadership from both companies, as well as Jenkintown Borough officials, have worked to codify standard operating procedures including:
- Mandated, documented training for specific roles in the department
- A clear chain of command
- Fiscal oversight of budgets to maintain the fire apparatus in their care, custody, and control
This process slowly moved forward but became stagnant and faced challenges. To reinvigorate the process and to leverage current best practices, in 2022 Borough Council commissioned Tom Sullivan, the former Chair of Montgomery County Public Safety, to create a roadmap for Jenkintown. Mr. Sullivan has helped other municipalities in Pennsylvania create similar plans for consolidation of multiple fire companies into one sustainable fire department.
The goal of the Borough continues to be maintaining public safety while being fiscally responsible. As such, the Borough has been advised that the best way to do that is to consolidate into one fire department. In the coming months, Borough Council, in partnership with leadership from Pioneer and Independent Fire Companies, and Fire Chief Ken Lynch, we will be:
- Opening up membership to the Jenkintown Fire Department for all members of the former Pioneer and Independent Fire Companies and filling out the leadership roles under Fire Chief Ken Lynch by those individuals who meet the agreed upon required training standards
- Retiring the radio identifiers # 16 and # 96 used by the individual fire companies in exchange for a new number for Montgomery County public safety to use as the radio identifier for Jenkintown Fire Department.
- Begin to conduct their regular weekly training as a unified fire department
The new Jenkintown Fire Department will follow the jointly established standard operating procedures and function as a unified Department under the leadership of Chief Ken Lynch, who has been the acting Fire Chief over both companies for the past several years. Chief Lynch brings several decades of experience, training, and dedication to providing fire prevention services to the Borough and we are grateful for his continued leadership. This modernization and pursuit of operational effectiveness through a unified fire department has been a project that both fire companies and Jenkintown Borough Council have been working on for over a decade – we are really excited for this next chapter and look forward to a Borough celebration and unveiling of the new Fire Department.