Adapting to growth in Lewis & Clark County has been the hardest challenge for West Valley Fire Rescue.  Budgetary limitations as well as inflations has had a considerable impact on our viability to keep up with the rate of growth.  As one of the lowest mill levy for fire service in the county, we expect to need additional support from the community in the near future. 

The collabrative efforts between the old L&C Fire District and WVFR was a great first step.  Merging the two fire districts in 2021 created one of the largest and busiest fire districts in the state of Montana.  The national struggle to recruit volunteer firefighters is not foreign to the 14 volunteer fire agencies in L&C County.  The exciting achievement WVFR had in 2023 was the successful recruitment, training, and retention of 18 new members.   But at almost 1,000 emergency calls for service in each of the past two years, we have experienced double digit percent increases since pre-2020.  

2024 will be a time of investment into our members.  Growing the training and experience of our members will help to promote the safe, efective, and effecient deployment of resounces on emergency incidents.   Our pledge to the membership is to develop new fire engine operators and new company officers which will help provide the depth of trained resources.   These short term goals fortify our logevity of our current department structure.  

As we build our strategic plan for the next five years, we have to consider how additional calls for service impact our all volunteer response force.   In conjunction with the need to replace fire apparatus, what was a $350,000 fire engine is now well over $600,000 in just 3 years post-pandemic inflation.   Both issues create a need to be fiscally conservative, invest in our members, and having an increased community support in the near future.