'For hire' fire policy needs monitoring

Editor,

The purpose of my letter to the editor and the people of Lake County as fellow taxpayers is misuse of county funded non-profit volunteer fire department training. In this particular instance, a county sponsored Engine Boss certification class was attended by a "Volunteer Fireman." Let me remind all of us that the term usually means a non-profit individual that wants to help the people of his town and county free of charge without profiting himself.

This person in question attended such a class. He had the audacity to even bring his "private for hire" engine to the course to train himself under the thinly disguised excuse that his "small" station does not have enough Type Six trucks to train with, so he would volunteer his.

Now after receiving his training, he proceeded to work on every fire he could get signed up on, in as large of an area as he could respond to. All the while he is doing this, the "small" station he belongs to is short his newly acquired skills and his town is less protected from the forest fires. Now the type of training he received is of a nature that is used in forest fire fighting and if he is gone during that particular season with his "hire for profit" fire engine, what did that training we as taxpayers provided accomplish?

We all know that private for hire fire fighting is very profitable. I also understand that many volunteer firemen fight forest fires.

When they do, it is with county-owned equipment and the proceeds go directly to the respective fire departments for their own use.

Such is not the case with the person who receives all of the proceeds and his "small" local station receives nothing but a shorthanded station, less one highly trained and certified Engine Boss that Lake County taxpayers trained and expected to be able to rely on. Such should not be the case!

I, as a taxpayer, would like to see a closer monitoring of such training classes and a guideline concerning such a conflict of interest type policy.

I know in other fields of taxpayer-sponsored training such as Montana Highway Patrol officers are not allowed to use their training for "private for hire" side jobs. Such should also be the policy of our county tax paid Volunteer Fire Department system.

As for the person involved, I'm sure you know who you are and know you know people are watching. This is from a somewhat disgruntled taxpayer. I would also like to state I'm not affiliated with any state or local fire agency or department. I'm just a concerned taxpayer.

Jacques Longpre

Polson