VAN BUREN TWP. — The Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department board and at least one county commissioner have pledged to meet and work through issues with ownership of the fire station that are preventing Brown County from receiving state grants.

One option could be dissolving the Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department, which has served the township since 1976. That idea was brought up several times during a 90-minute discussion at the Van Buren station Feb. 13.

The county commissioners have until March 5 to notify the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs which of three options they’re choosing to make good on a promise made when the building was constructed: to use it as a fire station for at least five years.

Since the Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department had its contract with the Van Buren Township trustee severed in July, OCRA is not recognizing Van Buren as a functioning fire department, Brown County commissioner Jerry Pittman said.

The options are to put a fire department that has a contract to serve Van Buren Township in that building — either the Van Buren VFD, Southern Brown, which is the new fire department the trustee created over the summer, or another one; change the building to some other eligible use, such as a community center; or repay some or all of the grant money used to build the station, which was originally $400,000. The amount the county would have to repay would be based on an appraisal of the property.

Van Buren needs a fire station far more than it needs a community center, said Pittman, whose district includes Van Buren Township.

The county also is dependent on grants to complete projects that can’t be covered with tax money, he said. Grants from the Community Development Block Grant program through OCRA and the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority are now on hold until the commissioners resolve the station ownership issue.

If the commissioners choose to put a fire department in that building, and it’s not Van Buren, Van Buren VFD would have to be dissolved and its assets sold, Van Buren Fire Chief John Ward said.

Brown County Commissioners President Dave Anderson was the first to suggest dissolving the department at last week’s meeting.

Ward, who is a nonvoting member of the fire board, said he’s open to discussing it, but it would take time to do that the right way if that’s what the commissioners choose. Any money made from the sale of equipment would be donated to a nonprofit — after the fire department’s outstanding bills are paid, he said.

He and board members Bonnie Closey and Jane Donaldson told the crowd that Van Buren VFD still owes about $63,000 to its lawyer, who shepherded the department through a years-long legal battle with the township over the fire protection contract and other issues.

Ward also suggested that the Van Buren VFD could be given more time to rebuild. This wouldn’t be the first time the station has gone through a rebuilding process in the 11 years Ward has been involved with it, he said; and it wouldn’t be unheard of for a township to have contracts with two fire departments.

“I’d be more than happy to sit down with the people who have legal authority to make a decision about what we’re going to do [which is the fire board members] and see what we can work out,” Pittman said. “And I will do everything reasonable under the law … to work with you. My goal is to see that this becomes a viable volunteer fire station to serve the citizens of this township, and I don’t care whether it goes to these folks or these folks or those folks; I’m not taking anybody’s side here.”

He told the fire board he thinks they’re going to be hearing from the commissioners in the very near future. “I’ve always believed that if reasonable people can sit down and have a reasonable discussion, then any problem can be reasonably resolved,” Pittman said.

“That’s all we’ve been waiting for,” Closey said.

Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department’s name is on the paperwork for the grant that built the station, as well as on the deed to the land. However, the county commissioners were the lead grant applicant, so that’s why OCRA is requiring them to come to some sort of resolution.

There are multiple problems with that arrangement, Donaldson said. She said Trustee Vicki Payne forced the department into noncompliance because she and the advisory board withheld contract funding. The department responded with a lawsuit in the spring of 2015, which finally ended in July 2017 with Southern Brown Volunteer Fire Department being formed and the Van Buren VFD’s contract being severed.

“The trustee that helped write the grant is also the one that killed the grant by not funding it, by not supporting the entity that she wrote a grant for,” Donaldson said.

Kevin Fleming came to a similar conclusion after asking a series of questions to Pittman. Fleming is a former Indiana State Board of Accounts field auditor who’s running for Van Buren township advisory board. “Shouldn’t you be talking to the trustee of this township and its advisory board?” he asked Pittman, to applause.

“We want to talk to everyone involved,” Pittman said. “… We’re trying to effect what would be in the best interest of all citizens of Brown County.”

Payne did not attend the meeting, but her husband, Steve Payne, and son, Doug Payne, did. Both are members of the new Southern Brown Volunteer Fire Department. Van Buren Township Advisory Board member Ben Phillips also attended.

Doug Payne asked the fire board who was in breach of contract first: the trustee’s office or the fire department? That question was never answered in court. He also pointed out that the township had put more than $100,000 into the building. Donaldson answered that those funds were taxpayer money.

Under state law, neither the county commissioners nor the county council have the authority to control the way the township is spending money, said county council President Keith Baker. Only the voters and advisory board members have a say on the local level.

The trustee and advisory board decide which departments get fire contracts and for how much.

“I think OCRA handed the commissioners a very defective contract,” Pittman said, referring to their lack of direct control in keeping the building in use as a fire department for five years.

Former Van Buren Fire Board member Heather Stafford said she has concerns about allowing Southern Brown to cover Van Buren Township because she had heard on her scanner instances in which they did not respond to runs.

Doug Payne said there were a few months when Southern Brown didn’t have the necessary certifications to respond to medical runs, but that’s been fixed. He debated with Stafford about whether or not they’d missed any fire runs.

“We’re working the best we can do. I’m not going to sit here and let you badmouth the new fire department when you don’t know nothing about it,” he told Stafford, before Steve Payne stepped out the door with him.

Closey said it’s important to remember that everyone who responds for a local fire department is a volunteer, and there aren’t enough of them in the county or even the nation. “This is a much bigger problem,” she said.

Toward the end of the meeting, members of the audience asked for investigations into the trustee’s office’s use of money to fund Southern Brown Volunteer Fire Department instead of Van Buren VFD.

By that time, most of the elected officials present had left and no one answered their requests, except for Phillips assuring them that no one did anything wrong.