March 16, 2019
By: Dwayne Page
Members of the Smithville-DeKalb County Rescue Squad are counted on during times of emergencies for body recovery after a drowning, cave rescues, and to help clean up from storm damage among other missions.
Although the Rescue Squad, a non-profit organization, receives funds from the County and City of Smithville the members themselves get no pay and have to rely on fundraisers to help keep the operation viable .
To recoup some of their personal expenses as volunteers, the Rescue Squad is asking the county to allocate $12,000 in the 2019-20 budget for fuel reimbursement to its members.
Captain Dustin Johnson made a formal request during a budget committee meeting of the county commission last Wednesday night.
“We are not asking for any more money as far as our budget. We are asking for $12,000 in fuel reimbursement. It’s getting harder and harder to find volunteers. It used to be that they would come out of the wood work,” said Johnson.
“Our members spend a lot of hours, especially at a drowning. We may work a drowning for a week. I have been there for a month at a time. These volunteers come out during storms and use their own vehicles and chainsaws. We have around 32 members so if you divided that up ($12,000) it would be like $375 per member a year. If possible I would like for you to consider it,” said Captain Johnson.
The county currently donates $22,821 annually to the Rescue Squad as a non-profit organization since it is not considered an entity of county government. The City of Smithville donates $2,000 to the Rescue Squad.
The county upped the ante from $16,000 two years ago to support the Rescue Squad’s plans to purchase a pontoon boat.
Johnson said the Rescue Squad is expensive to operate.
“When I took this over several years ago we had members who didn’t even have pagers. Now the pagers are getting older and we’re trying to buy three new pagers a year and that’s about $400 each. It’s really expensive but we have a lot of fundraisers so we don’t have to come back to you so much. If we didn’t have fundraisers it would really be hard to operate,” added Johnson.
The local rescue squad is also a member of the Tennessee Association of Rescue Squads (TARS).
“We have to pay over $500 a year just to be a member but by being a member we benefit from their training. If we get into a situation in our county I can make a call to TARS and I can have 10 counties here from this region within a couple of hours and we have done that,” said Johnson.
The Rescue Squad has improved services in recent years and plans to continue upgrading as money becomes available. “ I am running three certified divers and we have SCUBA gear but we want to invest in a $50,000 robot with sonar to up our technology,” Johnson concluded.
The budget committee took no action on Johnson’s request Wednesday night but will consider it when finalizing the 2019-20 spending plan to send to the county commission.