Years of bad feelings between the Windham Township Volunteer Fire Company and township supervisors came to a head last week, prompting the fire company to withdraw its equipment and services.
Now the supervisors say they'll start their own fire company with donated equipment.
``I think the feeling among the people here is we do not want them back,'' said Supervisor Chairman Charles Davis, who says a survey has shown township residents support the supervisors.
Windham Township, home to 967 people, is an agricultural community of rolling hills in northern Pennsylvania's Bradford County. Its volunteer fire company, which dates to 1969, has housed its trucks and held its meetings in the township building from the beginning, when friendships formed around chicken roasts and bingo nights.
But a series of disputes in the 1990s dampened the goodwill, and now neither side trusts the other to negotiate in good faith.
``It's like the Hatfields and the McCoys,'' said Bev Vasey, a former volunteer with the company who now sides with Davis.
Amid complaints that the fire company was limiting access to the community hall, township supervisors in 1996 demanded a new five-year lease. That deal paid the fire company $7,000 per year to either buy or build a new fire hall.
Feeling they were under attack, the firefighters worked to elect two of their own, Gale Bowen and Ed Kaminski, to the township's three-member board. With the firefighters in the majority, the board in 1999 approved a 99-year lease that kept the fire company in the township hall.
The next year, Bowen was defeated in his re-election bid, and Davis and board member Larry Brown last June voted to rescind the 1999 lease. Since then, the township has stopped making payments to the fire company.
On Feb. 3, after the township refused to resume making payments called for in the 99-year lease, firefighters pulled out.
Each side accuses the other of intimidation and harassment, and insists the only solution is the removal of the other side's leaders.
``You can't bury the hatchet with the likes of Charlie Davis,'' Bowen said.
Three neighboring municipalities have agreed to cover Windham in an emergency, but each is at least 15 minutes from the township's center and they say they'll soon charge some $3,000 a month for services.
``We're better off,'' said local retiree Bruce Yeagle at a gathering of about 20 supporters of township supervisors. ``I don't think there's anyone in this group that wants them back. It's just such a relief to have them gone and not to have to deal with them anymore.''
Dean Fernsler, who works with fire companies for the Governor's Center for Local Government Services, said the fire company probably was within its rights to pull up stakes. In Pennsylvania, most volunteer fire companies are private nonprofits that contract with the local government.
Still, the move took him by surprise.
``The actions taken by the fire company here are extremely unusual and extraordinarily rare,'' Fernsler said. ``I don't know of anywhere else that this has happened in Pennsylvania.''
Fernsler says starting a new fire company with new equipment might be the only way to end the dispute.
``With those two parties, I think it's going to be extremely difficult because the memories run very deep,'' Fernsler said.
