Since the late 19th century, Rutland has required its firefighters to live in or near the city. The rule was created before cars were widely available, when emergency responders walked to work and needed to get to the station quickly in case of an emergency. The rules have loosened over the yea rs — since 1976, Rutland firefighters have been allowed to live up to five miles away from their station — but now the Rutland City Firefighters Association wants to remove the residency requirement altogether as a way to widen the pool of potential recruits. That will require changing the city charter, a process that involves an as-yet-unscheduled citywide vote, then approval by the legislature and governor. Just 13 Vermont municipalities have career, aka paid, firefighting departments. Of those, only three — Rutland City, Barre City and Hartford — still have residency requirements for full-time employees. But several have debated such policies in recent years, with similar arguments about the pros and cons. Those in Rutland who are opposed to removing the requirement say it remains an important way to keep off-duty firefighters nearby; eliminating the rule could lengthen emergency response times. “We know times change, but some things don’t change if your house is burning down,” Alderman Barry Beauchamp told Seven Days. Rutland City Fire Chief William Lovett is also opposed, but he’s open to a compromise that would expand the allowable radius up to 15 miles. He noted that the city is surrounded by volunteer departments that typically don’t have on-call firefighters sleeping at the station. That means he can’t always be sure how many of those volunteer firefighters will be able to help the city. “That’s why the city kept the five-mile radius — they knew people would be able to get here quickly,” Lovett said. Departments with full-time staff have protocols in place for emergencies of different sizes. During severe situations, the Rutland department calls all off-duty firefighters. Ideally, everyone would respond, Lovett said, but that’s not always the case — creating a tricky situation for bigger blazes. While a city such as Burlington can depend on what’s known as “mutual aid” from professional departments in the surrounding suburbs, Rutland doesn’t have that luxury. The nearest fully-staffed department is 40 minutes away in Woodstock, noted Kyle Robillard, president of the Rutland firefighters’ union. Kyle Robillard Credit: Caleb Kenna Calling on nearby volunteer departments can help, Lovett said, but there’s less certainty about the number of people who will respond. The tussle in Rutland over the residency requirement also highlights a recruitment problem confronting fire departments across Vermont. Volunteer departments have typically been a training ground from which career departments can draw new employees. But the number of volunteers is shrinking — from about 900,000 nationally in 1984 to roughly 635,000 in 2023, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council. That trend is expected to continue, as 26 percent of firefighters in towns with fewer than 25,000 residents are over the age of 50. Vermont has no state-specific data on volunteer and career firefighters, according to Michael Skaza, chief of training for the Vermont Fire Academy. But the number of Vermonters holding an entry-level “Firefighter 1” certification has dropped precipitously, from 3,054 in 2012 to just 849 in 2024, according to data from the Division of Fire Safety. “Across the country, we’ve seen downward trends in firefighter recruitment, and that transfers through to enrollment levels,” Skaza said. “Obviously, if there’s fewer people entering the service, there’s fewer people taking the training.” This has resulted in fierce recruiting battles. In Montpelier, Fire Chief Derek Libby said he has watched his hiring pool shrink to just a handful of qualified candidates. That’s a far cry from his own experience 30 years ago, when hundreds of applicants used to compete for a single career firefighter position. The fire doesn’t know if it’s in Burlington or Montpelier. It burns the same; it’s just as deadly. Derek Libby In late April, Montpelier and a few other local departments were looking to fill full-time positions, “and I bet you I could list off every candidate that was on everybody’s interview list because those 10 to 20 people are putting their names in everywhere,” Libby said. Rutland City’s fire department is currently staffed with 30 full-timers, many of whom started their careers as volunteers in nearby departments and later moved to the city. Robillard, the union head, said open positions only attract two or three applicants with the experience and certifications necessary to work as a career firefighter in the city of more than 15,000 people. That previous training has been key since 2010, when Rutland City stopped paying the salaries of prospective firefighters while they get certified at the Vermont Fire Academy. “It became easier and less expensive to hire firefighters from volunteer departments,” Robillard said at a June meeting of the city’s Charter and Ordinance Committee, the Rutland Herald reported. “Effectively, we haven’t hired a Rutland City resident in years.” But many of those volunteers are already settled in other towns, where kids may be in school or a spouse works, he said. Requiring them to relocate, especially with such an overheated real estate market, is a lot to ask. Other professional fire departments have struggled with the issue of residency. Hoping to drive recruitment, St. Johnsbury removed its requirement in 2021. But that led to problems, according to Fire Chief Bradley Reed. “Firefighters were responding to calls and realizing that … you have off-duty members who were living far enough away that they weren’t able to come back,” Reed said. Last year, St. Johnsbury reinstated a rule that specifies firefighters must live within 11 miles of town. Woodstock, meanwhile, became a professional department in 2020 — the smallest Vermont municipality to do so. At the time, the town debated whether to include a residency requirement for its members. Fire Chief David Green said they decided against a new rule, given the cost of housing in the area. Montpelier does not have a residency requirement, much to the chagrin of Chief Libby. He was previously deputy chief of operations in Burlington, which boasts the state’s largest department, with about 100 full-time employees. Moving to Montpelier was a big adjustment for Libby: leading a department of just 18 full-time employees who serve about 8,000 residents and responded to around 2,200 calls last year — a number that is expected to increase. The fire station, which also provides the city’s ambulance service, has a minimum staffing requirement of three people. Without a residency requirement, he has firefighters who live too far away to provide emergency backup when the team needs help. As a result, Libby relies on a mix of volunteer and career firefighters from nearby mutual aid partners more often than he would like. “The fire doesn’t know if it’s in Burlington or Montpelier. It burns the same; it’s just as deadly, and I’m throwing one or two people at it,” Libby said. Back in Rutland, union chief Robillard is bracing for some retirements on the horizon. “This will be a really telling cycle of what the applicant pool is going to look like,” he said. Removing the residency requirement, Robillard said, would be an easy way to test whether it gives the department a recruiting edge. “These careers are unlike any others; you have to be competitive in the market,” he said. “If you’re looking for people to come prequalified, you need to entice them.” ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Playing With Fire? | Rutland firefighters want to remove a residency requirement to help recruitment. Opponents say that poses a safety risk.” The post Rutland Debates Removing a Residency Requirement for Firefighters appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less