By Phyllis Rose
Brady Township is on track to leave the South Kalamazoo County Fire Authority (SKCFA), ending a more than two-decade partnership which also serves the townships of Prairie Ronde, Wakeshma, Schoolcraft, and the villages of Vicksburg and Schoolcraft.
If all goes according to plan, Brady Township will leave the authority on April 1, 2026, and will contract with adjacent Pavilion Township for fire and emergency services.
Supervisor Randy Smith strongly emphasized that the Township has no issues with the firefighters from the SCKFA.
“They are highly trained, highly skilled,” he said. “This has nothing to do with dissatisfaction with them.”
The decision to leave the Authority is due to the changes that have taken place in the 144 square miles covered by the Authority over the past 25 years, he said.
“It made all the sense in the world back then,” Smith said. “We were four small, very rural, lightly populated townships and two very small villages, none of which had the money to fund their own fire department.”
Now, things are much different with Brady becoming a charter township due to growth in population and serving as a bedroom community for Kalamazoo and Portage, he said, noting that farm fields have been turned into residential properties.
Meanwhile, the Village of Vicksburg has grown significantly and with the renovations going on at the old five-story mill to turn it into both commercial and residential property, there will be a need for different fire equipment.
“The type of equipment and vehicles needed to deal with a five-story structure is radically different than what’s needed in a rural residential area where all you have is a two-story house,” said Smith.
It’s also anticipated that developers will be building multi-story structures along the US-131 corridor.
“The bottom line is that things have changed, things are developing,” said Smith. “They are building bigger. The needs are different.”
Considering these changing needs and the fact that Brady would need to pay for 25 percent of the cost of new equipment to deal with a five-story structure for the fire authority, the township board began exploring other possibilities for fire and emergency services, Smith said. Those possibilities included creating its own fire department or contracting with another department.
The board decided to contact Pavilion Township about the possibility of its fire department providing services to Brady. To help them with that decision, Brady provided Pavilion with data over the last three years which they keep as part of their association with the fire authority.
Also, Pavilion’s fire chief and deputy fire chief drove through Brady Township and thought it was a doable partnership.
Another factor playing into the decision is that Pavilion has two full-time firefighters while all the authority’s firefighters are on-call so they have to drive from wherever they are and get to the department before going out on a call, Smith explained, noting that a fire department with full-time firefighters can show up more quickly.
“In an emergency, seconds can mean the difference between life and death,” he said. “I can get them there three or four times faster using this department (Pavilion’s) than I can SKCFA.”
Brady and Pavilion have a history of intergovernmental agreements including a water and sewer authority and special assessment districts for weed control on the lakes.
Smith anticipates that the cost of contracting with Pavilion will remain at the same price or perhaps lower than what it pays the SKCFA, roughly $200,000 a year.
The fire authority’s budget could increase as it is tasked with buying equipment to service taller buildings such as at the mill property or with the development projected along US-131.
“Their budget is going to keep climbing and climbing,” he said. “Short to medium long-term, we will be paying less for better/faster service.”
Pavilion Township is very similar to Brady and the equipment its fire department needs is similar to Brady’s needs, Smith noted.
Brady Township has signed a memorandum of understanding spelling out the details of the potential agreement with Pavilion. Once Pavilion signs off on that, the next step is to sign the formal agreement, which the Townships’ lawyers are already working on.
The fire authority’s Articles of Incorporation require any entity that wants to pull out of the Authority must give at least a year’s notice, plus however many days it takes to get to the next April 1, the start of the authority’s fiscal year.
So, once the Township gives notice at the Fire Authority Board meeting in mid-March, the withdrawal would take place on April 1, 2026.
In the meantime, Brady will still be paying its 25 percent of the authority’s budget and the fire authority has a year to figure out what the impact will be, Smith said.
“Fixed costs will stay the same,” he said. “Variable costs will come down. A year is plenty of time to figure that out.”
The additional costs for Pavilion should be minimal. Even if Pavilion has to add two more firefighters, those firefighters will be running in Pavilion as well as Brady, said Smith.
“I owe it to my taxpayers, because we have an assessment for fire, to say I can get you better service with a faster response time for less money, do I think I should do it?” he said. “It’s a win-win. The service level goes up significantly for less money. It’s just crazy not to do it.”
