March 7, 2019 HUNTINGTON TOWNSHIP RESIDENTS: It has been some time since I have given you a report on the operation of your fire department so here goes, 2018 was an extremely busy year for us as we were dispatched to a total of 846 fire and EMS emergency calls, 729 EMS and 117 fire calls, Huntington Township answered 622 of those EMS emergencies, unfortunately we continue to struggle with the Sunday through Thursday night time hours that are covered by the totally volunteer crew so a private EMS company had to respond into the township 107 times to answer these calls. Lets move forward, in late summer 2018 the fire department applied for and was awarded a grant by FEMA, this grant is a SAFER grant (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) currently we staff the fire station with up to 3 FF/EMT on duty from 700 am until 700 pm 7 days a week, and 700 pm until 700 am on Friday and Saturday nights, this SAFER grant will allow us to fill those empty night time shifts with paid FF/EMT. It gives me great pleasure to report to you that after many months of discussion and work on this issue of staffing the fire station that the Board of Township Trustees (Danny Mathuews, Gary Hopkins, Larry Kellough and Robin Snyder Fiscal Officer) have all agreed that it would be in the best interest of the township residents to hire 3 full time FF/EMT to be on duty at the fire station 24/7. Effective March 11, 2019 the 3 full time FF/EMT go on duty and begin a historic step in the operation of your fire department, these 3 full time FF/EMT will be supplement by our current part time paid staff, we will have 1 full time and 1 part time FF/EMT on duty every day of the week and a 3rd on duty 700 am until 700 pm. This is a huge step for your fire department and was only made possible by everyone (Board of Trustees, Fiscal Officer, my Assistant Chiefs, and the part time and volunteer crews) working together to solve this problem of lack of night time response. The last 2 fire levy requests received exceptional support from you the residents, and I hope that I can take this as a sign of support for what we are doing at the fire department.