COUPLAND — An offer has been made, but the Board of Emergency Services Commissioners of Williamson County Emergency Services District No. 10 needs more time and information before deciding whether or not to take over responsibility for territory belonging to Avery Pickett Fire Department, officials said.
At the March 14 ESD meeting, commissioners met in executive session with their attorney Ken Campbell regarding a letter they had received from the attorney representing Avery Pickett, which proposes to amend its agreement with Williamson County and allow ESD 10 to be the first-responder in territory that will be subject to an annexation vote in May west of state highway 95 in Taylor’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
“We have the proposal from Avery Pickett,” said President Bob Avant. “We are certainly interested in talking with them about that, and we want to ask our counsel to discuss with them the path forward. The counsel has given authority to follow up with their attorney and have appropriate discussions as is seen fit.”
According to the letter, the “purpose of this proposal is hopefully to put an end to what appears to be an interest in denigrating APVFD in furtherance of a successful vote for annexation of the Territory by ESD 10,” a charge supporters of the ESD deny.
While initially Avery Pickett representatives said annexation would destroy the 118-year-old volunteer department, this letter appears to be an about-face.
“Our lawyer has reached out to theirs asking them to take the territory in dispute now and prove to the citizens it isn’t about money,” said Assistant Chief John Shelton in a written statement to the Taylor Press. “We are willing to cede the territory right now, with no transaction involving money, and not to dispute any election results or even campaign.”
Avant said after the meeting that commissioners were waiting to get more details before making any decisions.
“There are a number of questions that have to be resolved, primarily how does the county view this, because the county is the one that has control over the service areas,” Avant said. “The county has to weigh in first because if the county says no then it is dead in the water … and of course, I think the City of Taylor needs to weigh in too because they are involved also in the sense that it is bordering on them. It is possible there would be some sort of arrangement where there would have to be some sort of mutual aid response or something like that. That is sort of the role the county plays is, here is how we define this area, here is who is going to service it and who will be backing them up. All those questions have to be answered before we can really make a decision.”
Shelton said he believes response times will increase and services could be reduced if ESD 10 wins the election “The Avery Pickett Fire Department members want what’s best for the community, and we think that’s the current response they receive,” Shelton said.
But ESD 10 sees things differently.
“I completely disagree with that,” Avant said. “There is no basis in fact for his (Shelton’s) claim. Once we take on a new area, that will require additional resources, and we are prepared to do that ... We don’t know whether their current response would be any different than ours.”
An ESD is a taxsupported entity created by a public vote to provide fire protection and emergency medical services in a designated area. Most volunteer fire departments, however, raise revenue through charitable donations and activities such as Bingo, and do not have a fulltime paid staff.
Since last summer, supporters of the two fire departments have traded charges of online attacks since a resident of Avery Pickett’s district first proposed the idea of annexation and then submitted a petition to be annexed into the ESD’s territory with 99 names earlier this year, which commissioners approved moving forward on in February.
Jeff Sciarretta, a firefighter and chaplain at ESD 10, expressed his support for the commissioners and the firefighters during public comment at the March meeting.
“I don’t smell any trouble, so it might be good here,” Sciarretta said, speaking as a citizen. “I know things are tapering off a little bit from the last couple of crazy meetings, but keep going, y’all are doing an excellent job.”
