Crescent fire chief wants to remove Rhinelander from auto aid agreement

The Crescent town board will more than likely at its Dec. 13 meeting take up whether to remove the city of Rhinelander from the automatic aid agreement the town has with the city and the town of Newbold.

The automatic aid agreement was on the agenda for a special town board meeting on Nov. 29 and Crescent town chairman Robb Jensen said he wanted to provide “a little update here as to why this is on the agenda.”

He referred to the town board’s previous meeting where he informed the town board he’d received an email from Dan Hess, chief deputy for the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office, regarding a request to remove the Rhinelander Fire Department from the automatic aid agreement. 

“Because of that, I thought the best solution to find out what that’s all about was to get those three parties together,” Jensen said. 

The “parties” are Crescent fire chief Keven Mahner, Rhinelander fire chief Brian Tonnancour, and representatives from the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office. 

“I wasn’t able to get a meeting scheduled with all three groups together,” he said, and added that he met with representatives of the sheriff’s office, the Rhinelander fire department, and then with Mahner “at a later date.” 

“Shouldn’t that meeting have included all the other townships that are involved with this?” town supervisor Mike Pazdernik asked.

“The other townships have nothing to do with whether or not the town of Crescent board thinks we should drop the Rhinelander fire department,” Jensen said. 

“Actually, it’s my decision ...” Mahner began. 

Jensen stopped him.

“I’ve got the floor right now,” he said to Mahner. 

“My feeling is I wouldn’t go rogue,” Pazdernik said. “I would want all the other townships to be on the same page we are.”

“Mike, I appreciate your opinion but as you saw in the email I received from chief deputy Hess,” Jensen said and he read from Hess’s email.

“‘Can you review this?” he read from the Hess email. “‘I believe that this would negatively affect the public safety of the town of Crescent. I would request that the town board approve this before changes are made and then we will make the necessary changes as requested.’”

Jensen said what he was following up on was “something purely affecting the town of Crescent.”

“If, for some reason, people disagree with the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department and the 911 center as to what they do, that’s up to other towns,” he said. “This email asked for the town of Crescent to weigh in. That’s why I dealt with the town of Crescent. I wasn’t going to try to get everybody together.”

“That doesn’t make sense because the towns, with the MABAS (Mutual Aid Box Alarm System) agreement, they should all be on the same page,” Pazdernik said. 

“The what?” Jensen asked.

“The MABAS agreement,” Pazdernik said. 

“This is not a MABAS agreement,” Jensen said. 

“It should be,” Pazdernik told Jensen. “They should all be together. I don’t buy this single idea. I’m sorry.”

‘Pretty straightforward’

As Jensen handed out copies of a document explaining the difference between automatic aid and mutual aid, Mahner attempted to speak. 

“Mr. Jensen,” he said. “Can I explain how it actually works?”

“Kevin, I emailed, you’re gonna get your chance,” Jensen said. 

“You are so wrong,” Mahner told him. 

“I indicated to you I will get you the opportunity to present your side,” Jensen said to Mahner. “You’re gonna have that. The issue before us is whether or not we want to have the Rhinelander fire department removed from the automatic aid. That’s where we’re at.”

Pazdernik said he would vote no “until we have all the other townships on the same page with us.”

“I’m not going rogue,” he said. 

“Again, I hope you appreciate I am responding to the email that was sent to me about the town of Crescent,” Jensen said to Pazdernik. “Not the other chiefs.”

Jensen finished handing out copies of the automatic aid agreement the town has with the Rhinelander fire department, which has been in effect since 2016, and he introduced Jacob Simkins, the emergency medical services director for the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office and Lt. Amy Pequet, the director of the dispatch center for the sheriff’s office. 

“Weigh in, in terms of what your position is,” Jensen said to Simkins and Pequet. 

That didn’t go over well with Mahner, who was sitting in the front row just a few feet from Jensen. 

“Are you serious?” he asked Jensen. “You’re not gonna ask my opinion? The chief of your jurisdiction? You’re gonna go off of somethin’ else, Mr. chairman? This is ridiculous.”

“Keven, I’ve no idea why ... “ Jensen began. 

“I am so exhausted with this,” Mahner said. “You don’t even have the authority to do this.”

“Keven, I indicated I am going to get to you,” Jensen said. “Wasn’t that made clear? Did I not indicate I was going to get to you?”

Mahner persisted. 

“Mr. Chairman, you should come to the chief of your jurisdiction first before going to any other organization,” he said. 

“I met with these people first so I could get their opinion,” Jensen said. 

“And that’s what you did wrong,” Mahner said. “You should have came to me first.”

He was urged by someone in the audience to “hold on” and Simkins stood up to speak. 

“This issue is actually pretty straightforward, pretty easy,” he said, telling the town board he’s attended numerous meetings and training sessions in both the private and public sectors to include the various fire departments in Oneida County.

“We’re all on the same page in working together,” Simkins said. “We have a really good public safety group. We get a lot hashed out at those meetings.”

Regarding the automatic aid issue at hand, he said the idea is to “mitigate injury” and that the Rhinelander Fire Department should be “contacted immediately and if their service is not needed, they will turn around and go home at no charge.”

“The world we live in as emergency responders, we know that seconds and minutes matter,” Simkins said. “That’s why we have numerous policies and procedures for helicopters, automatic aid requests, MABAS with one common goal to get equipment and responders to the scene of the incident as quick as possible to help save lives and mitigate injury.”

Simkins said Mahner’s proposal to remove the Rhinelander fire department from the automatic aid agreement “is dangerous and irresponsible.”

“It doesn’t make sense not to send a resource immediately that is close, staffed 24/7, willing and able to be at the scene in your jurisdiction right away,” he said. “If the call ends up being nothing, what do we lose? Nothing. They (Rhinelander fire/rescue personnel) turn around and go home. I don’t think anyone wants to explain to a loved one that we could have had resources at the scene quicker.”

Simkins urged the town board to deny Mahner’s request to remove the Rhinelander fire department from the automatic aid agreement. 

Jensen asked Pequet if she had anything to add. 

“Just that it is nice to have a department that is always at the ready to respond to situations,” she said. “The other departments are fantastic but we don’t get the response as quickly from them.”

Mahner’s turn

Jensen then gave Mahner his opportunity to explain, he said, an email Mahner sent to Pequet asking that the Rhinelander Fire Department be removed from the automatic aid agreement and that the Crescent fire department would request assistance from Rhinelander “if needed.”

“‘Newbold fire (department) will remain as automatic aid to Crescent as is,’” Jensen read from Mahner’s email to Pequet.

“Please, keep your comments on the auto aid agreement between the Crescent Volunteer Fire Department and Rhinelander Fire Department,” Jensen said to Mahner.

“When we established our auto aid agreement with Rhinelander, we were having major incidents on the highway,” Mahner said, explaining at the time, it was decided to have Rhinelander fire and rescue personnel paged on an automatic aid status for incidents such as structure fires and “major auto accidents requiring extrication or medical emergencies.”

The agreement, he said, was only with the Rhinelander Fire Department as, at the time, Crescent had a contract with the town of Woodboro and that then-Rhinelander fire chief Terry Williams wasn’t in favor of on-duty Rhinelander fire and rescue personnel going on calls outside the city because that would leave the city “naked with not enough people to cover a city of 8,000 or whatever it was at the time.”

“We told Mr. Williams we understand that,” Mahner said. “We only want ‘em out here for severe accidents or extrication when needed. That’s it. We’ll send them back as soon as we can.”

For the past two years, since the retirement of Williams and during the tenure to this point of Tonnancour as Rhinelander’s fire chief, Mahner said Rhinelander fire and rescue personnel have been dispatched to scenes of “minor accidents where actually, we (Crescent) don’t even need to be there.”

“We have vehicles with no injury, people up and walking around, cars in the ditch, not on fire, no lane blockage, no nothing,” he said. “We are simply taking Rhinelander fire off our auto aid agreement, moving them to our MABAS box alarms.”

In a critical situation, such as a major fire where a MABAS box alarm is activated, Mahner said that would be when the Rhinelander fire department would be called in for assistance “with necessary equipment we need at that time.”

“We’re not putting the town of Crescent at any risk at all,” Mahner said. “Actually, I am, for lack of a better word, appalled that anybody would think that myself or any other chief or member of this department or any other department would put the safety of this area at risk. If something major happens, yes, we will call out Rhinelander right away. Absolutely.”

A few minutes later, Mahner concluded his remarks. 

“I am able to make rational decisions under extreme pressure,” he said. “So, my decision for doing this is valid and I’m going to carry it out.”

There was a round of applause from members of the Crescent fire department as well as the chiefs of other Oneida County fire departments in attendance.

Oversight and other questions

Tonnancour, when his turn came to speak a few minutes later, opened his comments by saying “the loudest person in the room isn’t always the one telling the most truth.”

“You all can shake your heads and scream but not one person has come to talk to me about any of this stuff that’s happened,” he said and he refuted claims by Mahner that his firefighters aren’t trained in conducting traffic control at crash scenes. 

“Nine calls we’ve been to in Crescent this year,” Tonnancour said. “Of those nine calls, we have gotten to the scene first before anybody else or we’ve gotten there at the same time as chief Mahner has in his personal vehicle or alone on a rescue vehicle. What is one person gonna do at a scene?”

He said he didn’t want to turn the matter into a “pissing contest” because, when it comes to volunteer fire personnel, “we need them as bad as they need us.”

“At the end of the day, that’s all we’re trying to do here,” Tonnancour said. “We’re all on the same team.”

No decision was made on the automatic aid agreement at the Nov. 30 Crescent town board meeting and Jensen said afterward he expects to have it on the town board’s next meeting agenda as he continues to gather information to include who ultimately has the authority to make changes to the automatic aid agreement the town has with Rhinelander. 

He referred to the Crescent fire department’s bylaws which, when it comes to the safety of town residents, that’s something the town board is ultimately responsible for. 

“What is the oversight authority of the town board over the volunteer fire department?” Jensen asked. “What’s the oversight of the Oneida County 911 center questioning auto aid decisions? Is that something that they can say ‘No, we want the town.’ I don’t know. It seems to me that if, hypothetically, fire department leadership is making a decision that’s not in the best interest and safety and welfare of people, what options does the town board have?”

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].