Tiny Township’s bylaws for their fire department were updated after a 13-year span recently, with council members thanking emergency services director / fire chief Dave Flewelling for the task.
The fire and emergency services report was a result of a review which found many clauses outdated and not reflective of today’s legislative requirements of fire protection programs and services.
Flewelling went through a high-level overview of the changes at the recent committee of the whole meeting, explaining that the establishing and regulating bylaw for a municipality’s fire department sets out what services are provided by that department.
Within the definitions section of the proposed bylaw, ‘limited service’ had been added.
“It’s now standard verbiage in most, if not all, municipalities in our bylaws,” said Flewelling. “With the delivery of our fire service being reliant on volunteer firefighting staff; it’s a necessary addition.
“Limited service really means it’s dependent on the number of staff we have available, the equipment, training level of those staff that may respond at any given day, as well as environmental factors, road conditions, and anything else that may impede our response.”
Related to limited services, a further change addressed island properties in Tiny such as those on Giant’s Tomb, noting the township provided no fire services.
Flewelling also pointed out that for volunteer firefighters, an addition was for medical examination at age 60 and a mandatory retirement age of 65.
“All career departments have a mandatory retirement age of 60 or 65; therefore, working beyond this age is deemed to be a health and safety risk for career firefighters, and it’s also a risk for our volunteers – hence the addition to the bylaw,” Flewelling added.
When asked if the township paid for the examination, Flewelling said yes.
To maintain consistency, cost recovery listed in the fees and charges bylaw were also added to the proposed fire bylaw.
Two schedules were listed in the bylaw. The first cited the mission statement of the emergency services - fire department and primary goals, while ‘Schedule B’ listed the services provided including fire prevention and public education, and training and education.
“And while the services may look a whole lot different than they do in the existing bylaw, they are not in fact different,” stated Flewelling. “What I’ve done is simply expand on the description of each of the services to better define the services that we do provide.
“The only one that has had an update to it was the tiered medical assistance services, because we had done a change over four years ago now – prior to even me being chief – and it hadn’t been updated in the bylaw.”
Deputy Mayor Sean Miskimins expressed thanks to Flewelling for the effort put into updating the document.
“I know how labour-intensive this can be, and given that it was over 10 years since this has been brought, clarifying some of the language throughout – as I went through a side-by-side comparison, it definitely makes it a lot more clear,” Miskimins said.
While the committee of the whole approved of the proposed bylaw, it will be discussed and/or ratified at an upcoming regular meeting of council.
The proposed bylaw to establish and regulate a fire department report can be viewed on the agenda page on the Township of Tiny website.