SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

A RESPONSE FROM MEMBERS OF THE ELDRIDGE VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY

The Eldridge Volunteer Fire Company has read the City Council coverage from 6/15/26 with great interest. We understand the council's frustration. We do not, however, accept the characterization of our membership or our conduct put forward at that meeting, and we believe the public deserves a more complete picture.

“A year ago…it was about burnout. Now, it appears it is all about the money."

Mayor Campbell's assertion that our motives have shifted from community concern to financial self-interest gets it exactly backwards.

When this process began in early 2025, our department had full buy-in on exploring acquisition by the City. What followed was nine months of city-imposed obstacles: the City questioned whether it even had a legal obligation to provide fire protection, a question that consumed months of our members' time, combing through historical documents to prove that it did. During this time the City began to require that all communication be routed through their legal counsel and denied us the opportunity to continue conversations directly with council members or be added to the agenda at any meetings.  This change required us to retain our own legal counsel, further wasting valuable resources.  The City raised questions about whether our grant funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would transfer to the City. Then it floated the notion that the county might have legal claim to our assets in any transfer. None of these initiatives or arguments advanced the process.  All of them halted and delayed meaningful conversation, and consumed time, budget, and energy from a volunteer team already stretched to its limit.

What made this period particularly damaging was that the City did not confine its frustrations to the negotiating table. Throughout this process, city officials repeatedly criticized our department in public, characterizing us as difficult and unresponsive. At one point, then-Councilman Campbell publicly dismissed a 10-day response delay, remarking that "they were kind of in a hurry to get things going, and now here we are 10 days later and they haven’t fulfilled their thing.”  During those 10 days, our members responded to 24 emergency calls, all while holding down full-time jobs and family obligations. That 10-day delay is not a sign of indifference. It is a direct illustration of the very problem we are trying to solve. These dismissive comments were not private grievances. They were made in public forums and in the press, directed at a volunteer organization fighting to maintain public services, organize an acquisition, and respond to each of these inquiries that seemed designed to delay rather than inform.

The effect on department morale was significant. The effect on trust was irreversible. You cannot spend nine months publicly criticizing the people you are asking to partner with and then express surprise when those people decide the partnership is not in their best interest.

Sinking morale leads to higher attrition.  That attrition has a direct financial consequence. Fewer active volunteers means fewer calls answered. Fewer calls answered means we need paid staffing to fill the gap. Paid staffing costs money. This is not a difficult connection to make.

The City's own conduct over the past year contributed meaningfully to the increased cost of keeping Eldridge protected. Mayor Campbell cannot manufacture that problem and then express surprise at the price tag.

"I'm disappointed that there hasn't been any communication for two months."

The City is correct that there was a period of limited contact between April and June. What the City has chosen to omit is the reason why.

Immediately preceding our membership vote, the Iowa Capital Dispatch published a story about the termination of our fire chief from his position as city mechanic. City officials, including Mayor Campbell, had already provided on-the-record comment when the story ran. Our department's notification that the story was coming was a voicemail left at our unmanned station from the reporter, hours before publication.  That was our only opportunity to respond.

It is worth noting that Chief Schneckloth's termination occurred in December, four months before this story ran. During those four months, the City was actively pressuring our department to foreclose any consideration of Schneckloth for a future chief position. The story emerged not when the termination happened, but the specific week our membership was scheduled to vote on our future with the City. The department took that seriously enough that we delayed our vote entirely to rediscuss what we had learned about the nature of this process.

We will let these facts speak for themselves: city officials were prepared with on-the-record comments, our department learned the story was coming only from a voicemail at an empty station hours before publication, and a four-month-old termination became news the week of our vote. What we know is that it gave our membership serious and legitimate pause about what kind of partner the City intended to be. We do not apologize for taking the time to reflect on that.

On Fire Chief Keith Schneckloth

Mayor Campbell stated publicly that negotiations changed when the City informed the department that Chief Schneckloth would not be a viable candidate as fire chief if the City were to take over operations, citing his dismissal from his city mechanic position.

We will be direct: the City told us explicitly that there was no path forward to funding our department with Keith Schneckloth as our chief. That is a condition: city funding contingent on a personnel decision made by an independent organization. As an independent company, we will not allow a government body to dictate who leads us.  The city's reasons for ending his employment in a separate municipal role are a matter between him and the city; they have no bearing on his fitness to lead this independent department, which is a decision for our membership alone. Over his decades of membership, he has operated with exceptional integrity, honesty, and accountability. Our confidence in his leadership is not subject to city approval, and we will not be pressured into removing him as a condition of receiving public funds we have earned through more than 120 years of reliable, dedicated service to this community.

That arrangement, in our view, amounts to coercion. We believe it is beneath the interests of this community and an inappropriate use of government leverage against an independent organization.

The negotiations were going great, until the team changed.

Mayor Campbell praised our previous negotiating representatives, Dave Engler and Tim Martinek, while suggesting that the arrival of a new team marked a turn toward bad faith. This framing conveniently ignores why the team changed.

Dave and Tim led the acquisition initiative with the full support of our membership. Over the nine months that followed, they brought exhaustive good will, countless hours of personal time, and a genuine desire to find a workable path forward. What they received in return was a series of delays, diversions, and dead ends. After nine months of that, with no meaningful progress to show for it, they were burned out. The City's characterization of their tenure as a favorable benchmark, while ignoring the role city conduct played in exhausting them, is not honest.

The new committee took up the work with the full benefit of everything those nine months had taught us about what this department needs to function. If the City finds that stance less convenient to negotiate against, we understand. But calling it bad faith because it is firmer is not the same thing.

"This isn't a budget."

Council member Ashcraft held up our submission and declared it insufficient. We would note that we have shared detailed operational budget information with the City’s transition subcommittee throughout this process. We would encourage anyone on the council who feels they have not received adequate information to speak with their own committee members about what was provided.

As an independent organization, we have no legal obligation to open our full books to the City. The submission we provided was a good-faith accounting of how the requested funds would be allocated by category, an appropriate level of transparency for an independent organization submitting a service proposal.

On the numbers: Mayor Campbell's claim that we were "only $85,000 apart" as of April 8 is misleading. That gap applied exclusively to year-one operational expenses. It did not address the more significant gap in years 2 and 3 due to increased projected labor and equipment expense, nor did it touch capital needs: specifically, a replacement fire truck within three to four years and a $250,000–$300,000 buildout of our upstairs quarters.

The upstairs buildout is not a luxury. It is the mechanism by which we recruit volunteers from outside city limits, by offering station residency in exchange for membership and timely emergency response coverage. Without that capacity, our volunteer numbers continue to decline. With it, we have a realistic path to reversing that trend. It is mission critical.

We originally proposed that the City hold our capital funds in reserve, which would have enabled us to leverage additional grant funding against that gap, a direct benefit to taxpayers. When it became clear the City was not willing to fully engage on capital needs and couldn't close the gap on basic operational expenses either, we had no choice but to consolidate all requests into a single figure. The City's refusal to engage with the full picture created the number they are now calling outlandish.

On the FEMA/SAFER Grant

Council member Iossi suggested that including grant-eligible items in our budget was fiscally irresponsible, comparing our approach unfavorably to larger neighboring communities.

The SAFER grant is a reimbursement program. We spend the money first; federal reimbursement follows on a timeline subject to government shutdowns, administrative delays, and bureaucratic uncertainty. We cannot build a department budget around revenue that has not been received and cannot be guaranteed. We stated clearly in our proposal that any FEMA reimbursements received would directly offset our capital requests from the City. That is sound financial planning, not double-dipping.  Furthermore, on more than one occasion, the City suggested cutting services or selling trucks as a mechanism to make up for the budget shortfall they were creating.  We believe it would be an egregious error to cut services and reduce capabilities for the communities we serve, especially as the City cites rapid community growth.

Council member Iossi also sweepingly characterized these grant-funded items as "wants" rather than "needs." NFPA-compliant protective gear and per-call reimbursements for volunteer firefighters are not wants. They are life-safety standards and the most basic tools for retaining the people who answer Eldridge's emergency calls.

It is worth noting that this criticism comes from an administration currently pursuing a $32.9 million taxpayer-funded bond referendum whose public renderings include a pond feature with a pedestrian bridge, decorative landscaping, and park seating. The public can draw its own conclusions about who is distinguishing wants from needs.

What We Actually Do for Eldridge

The council has spoken at length about the cost of our services. We think it is worth the community's time to understand what those services look like.

From January 1 through June 9 of this year alone, our department responded to 350 calls.  A quick breakdown:

-              208 (nearly 60%) were medical in nature: cardiac arrests, strokes, heart problems, difficulty breathing, and general EMS calls

-              16 were motor vehicle collisions

-              71 were public assistance calls

-              12 were structure, vehicle, or outside fires

-              38 were CO/Fire alarms

-              5 were gas leaks

We note this because the City has acknowledged it is already exploring alternative providers. We would encourage the City to share publicly what those alternatives would cost Eldridge taxpayers: specifically, for the full scope of services we currently provide, including medical response. In an average year, medical calls represent nearly 75-80% of our volume. Any comparison that excludes that component is not an apples-to-apples comparison, and the public deserves to know the difference.

On the Character of Our Volunteers: and the Families Behind Them

At Monday's meeting, Mayor Campbell directly questioned the character of volunteer firefighters who would choose not to serve under city management. As reported in the North Scott Press, he framed it this way: "it's about community service. That's the bottom line. And if you're taken over by the city, you can walk out and leave your city empty-handed and unprotected, what does that say about you?" We reject that framing entirely.

Our members have given years, in many cases decades, of their personal time to protect the residents of Eldridge. Behind every one of them is a family: spouses, children, and loved ones who support this work from home, who give up dinners and weekends and holidays, and who have now watched this community's government publicly question the character of the people they love. Their sacrifice is as real as our own. The disservice done to our volunteers by these comments is matched only by the disservice done to the families who stand behind them.

Our members' willingness to serve is not unconditional, nor should it be. It is built on trust, and that trust has been damaged, not by our membership, but by the conduct of this administration throughout this process: the stalling, the public criticism, and the city's own signals that taking over the department could mean a reduction in services and the liquidation of assets this community has invested in over generations. Our members have heard those signals clearly. They are not willing to hand over what they have built to an administration that has already indicated it may dismantle it.

We would also offer this contrast: when a member of this department can no longer serve, for whatever reason, we do not disparage them, criticize them, or burden them with guilt. We thank them for their service and welcome them back if circumstances change. Every person has their own reason for stepping back, and we respect that. We would ask that Mayor Campbell extend the same courtesy to people who have given everything they had to this community.

Questioning the character of these volunteers is not leadership. These are the same men and women who responded to 350 calls in the first five months of this year. They deserve better than that from their mayor, and so do their families.

On Where Things Stand

We have asked the city to respond to our proposal by July 15. We remain open to a structured agreement that gives the city appropriate financial oversight of public funds while preserving our operational independence, a model the city's own attorney confirmed is legally viable and that at least two council members said they would support.

What we are not willing to do is accept funding conditioned on personnel decisions that belong to us alone, or a financial arrangement that leaves us unable to serve this community effectively.

Our firefighters have given countless hours to Eldridge. We intend to continue. The question, as we have said, is whether the city is prepared to invest in the level of service its residents expect and deserve.

Members of the Eldridge Volunteer Fire Company