Future Of Pacific Junction Fire Department In Limbo Following Resignations

The Pacific Junction Fire & Rescue Building.

Pacific Junction Mayor Andy Young (left) meets with Gov. Kim Reynolds and other local and state officials inside the Pacific Junction Fire Station in December 2019 to discuss the city’s flood recovery. The city has lost 75 percent of its residents since the 2019 flood and a substantial portion of its property tax revenue that funds city services.
The future of the Pacific Junction Fire & Rescue Department is in jeopardy following the resignation of the fire chief, volunteer firefighters and EMTs that made up the now dissolved Pacific Junction First Responders Association.
Steven Bogert, who had served on the Pacific Junction Fire Department for four years, including the past six months as chief, before tendering the resignation letter Nov. 8 on behalf of association members, said the decision to resign was difficult but one that was made in the best interest of the volunteers who served on the department.
“There’s a lot of complicated things that go into the decision,” Bogert said. “Ultimately, if you want to sum it all up, without a budget, we can’t maintain the equipment, we can’t be safe. If we can’t be safe and we can’t train, then what are we doing?
“When I took over, I said, my No. 1 priority is safety. My No. 2 priority is training because we have to rebuild from the ground up. Everybody that was on the department had little to no experience. I told the mayor and city council at my first city council meeting, this is going to be a slow and steady process - it’s going to be 18-24 months before the station gets healthy.”
Bogert said the letter he presented Nov. 8 to Pacific Junction City Clerk Korrena Neppl didn’t list specific reasons for the resignations, but he did expect to hear from the mayor and other city officials to discuss the association members’ concerns.
“I fully expected that perhaps the mayor (Andy Young), the clerk and the city council would like to discuss the reasons why, but there was silence for two weeks following giving our letter in person to the city clerk,” he said.
Bogert said he became chief during the 2022-23 fiscal year that ended on June 30 and served the first four-plus months of the 2023-24 fiscal year, but was never provided with a budget for the fire department.
“When I took over, the mayor told me my budget is what I fundraise,” Bogert said. “The city does have money, but I don’t know what they allocate toward the fire department. I was never provided a budget or sat down and discussed a budget for either fiscal year.”
Bogert said the city has paid for general maintenance (oil changes, brake work, etc.) costs for Pacific Junction Fire & Rescue vehicles, including a pumper fire engine, tanker fire engine, grass truck, utility vehicle and two ambulances, but the non-profit Pacific Junction First
Responders Association held fundraising events to pay for additional equipment and firefighting training. He said the association raised $7,300 for the purchase of 10 pagers and was in the process of raising additional funds for members to attend the Iowa State Fire School in January.
“It’s a non-profit. It’s not part of the city and the city has no say in it. It’s a fundraising entity,” Bogert said. “The pagers, the association raised the money for them so they are association property. The remaining balance of our bank account, which were funds from a haunted house event, the bylaws of the association says, if dissolved, funds must be given to another non-profit or government entity.”
Bogert said the association’s remaining funds - $3,351.97 – are being given to the Mills County K9 Unit, also a non-profit agency.
Pacific Junction City Clerk Korrena Neppl said the city does have a budget for the fire department. This year, she said, $16,942 is allocated for the fire department and $3,400 for ambulances. She said the majority of those dollars are spent on vehicle operations / repairs and required testing of equipment.
“Everything they’ve wanted repaired, we’ve repaired,” she said. “We’ve never told them no.”
Neppl said at one time Pacific Junction budgeted around $45,000 for its fire department, but a drastic decline in residents following the 2019 flood resulted in a substantial loss of property tax revenue for the city.
“Our census drives our money,” she said. “When you go from 400 population down to 97, our money pool is a lot different right now. That drives all of our money – our road use tax, everything. We’ve lost money everywhere.
“The whole city lives on about $44,000 a year in tax revenue.”
Neppl said Pacific Junction has struggled to maintain a fire department since the flood, noting many of the volunteers on the department have lived outside the city limits.
Although Pacific Junction is without a fire department at this time, the city is not without fire and rescue coverage. Since the 2019 flood, the Pacific Junction and Glenwood Fire & Rescue Departments have been duel paged to all calls in the Pacific Junction coverage area.
Bogert said because Glenwood’s department now has paid personnel and is “manned 24-7”, it’s impossible for Pacific Junction’s volunteer firefighters and EMTs to respond to calls as quickly as Glenwood.
“Right now, we’re under dual paging, which means if there’s a call in Pacific Junction’s territory, Glenwood and Pacific Junction are paged at the same time,” he said. “They, being manned full-time at the station, 99 percent of the time they will beat us on scene because we are all volunteers and respond from wherever we are.”
Bogert said “patient care” is most certainly a top priority and he fully understands and appreciates the importance of having the most expeditious response possible to an emergency scene, but Pacific Junction volunteer fire and rescue personnel were put in a tough spot because of the dual-paging arrangement with Glenwood.
“I still have to look my team in the face, that’s all volunteer and takes time out of all of our hectic schedules to be trained and respond to calls, and we never get to do what we trained for because Glenwood is there first,” Bogert said.
Neppl said she and other city officials are holding out hope that the firefighters and EMTs that resigned will reconsider.
“We were just letting it simmer because we weren’t really sure what all the problems were with them doing this,” she said. “Right now, we know we’re covered by Glenwood and we’re just trying to play it by ear. We’d like to keep them, if we can, keep our department running, of course, because we have nice new equipment in since the flood. We’d like to see it continue, but volunteers are hard to come by.”
Pacific Junction’s fire engines and ambulances stayed out of harm’s way during the 2019 flood by being moved to Glenwood, but equipment and machinery lost in the flooding of the fire station was replaced with insurance and FEMA funds, Neppl said.
Glenwood Fire Chief Matt Gray said his department is willing and capable of handling calls in and around Pacific Junction.
Gray said because Glenwood is already responding to all Pacific Junction calls, the situation doesn’t create added responsibilities for his department. Gray said he has spoken to both Bogert and Mayor Young about the situation and is sympathetic to the difficult situation the community is dealing with.
“It’s sad, but as we progress and more and more people move to Mills County, providing the services for the smaller departments gets tougher and tougher,” he said. “It becomes a burden because volunteers aren’t like they used to be.
“This is a nationwide situation with volunteers. It’s not like it was 20 or 30 years ago. Even the full-time departments are having problems capturing personnel.”
Since dual-paging on Pacific Junction calls was initiated, the Glenwood Fire Department has signed 28-E agreements for compensation from Plattville and Lyons Townships. Gray said Glenwood and Pacific Junction currently split the dollars allocated for fire protection from those two townships. If Pacific Junction is unable to maintain a fire department, all of the township funds would come to Glenwood, Gray said. There is no 28-E agreement is in place with Pacific Junction, but Gray said the city is being covered.
“Mills County 911 received notification of it (resignations) when I did. I worked with (Mills County 911 Emergency Management Director) Travis Hitchcock and he just went ahead and put us down,” Gray said. “He asked if that was kosher and I said, ‘Yes, go ahead and do it.’ That way nobody’s lacking service until contracts are in place. We stepped up and made sure they have coverage.”
Gray said he’s reached out to Bogert to let him know the Pacific Junction firefighters and EMTs who resigned are welcome to submit an application to join the Glenwood Fire Department.
“When he told me they had resigned, I said if there’s anybody that wants to, all they have to do is grab an application and go through the process down here,” Gray said. “As long as they can meet our requirements, they’re more than welcome to apply here and become a member.
“There are certain things we have to do. We have yearly physicals and follow all the state guidelines. They have to become certified firefighters within a two-year period, but we do all the training in-house to get them where they need to be.”