PEORIA, Ill. (25 News) – After more than an hour of passionate public comment before the Peoria Heights Board of Trustees, a key vote taken Tuesday afternoon could put the deal between the City of Peoria and Peoria Heights on hold.
The pending deal would contract out Peoria’s Fire Department for Peoria Heights calls.
Trustee Brandon Wisenburg led an effort to reverse a previous decision made by the board to move ahead with the contract. That motion passed, prompting cheers from the audience that had been engaging in back and forth with each other and the trustees.
In June, Peoria Fire Department Chief Shawn Sollberger presented to Peoria Heights a plan to use the fire department to cover the village which currently relies on volunteers.
“I am unsure how any person claiming to want the best for the village thinks that contracting with Peoria is it,” resident and business owner Stefanie Crawford said.
Sollberger said attorneys for the city and village were drafting the contract Tuesday afternoon. Peoria Heights Mayor Mike Phelan hoped the board would be able to make a final vote at their next meeting, but the recent motion puts that all on pause.
Phelan said there’s some confusion about the vote. A trustee who previously supported the contract voted to reverse the board’s decision. Phelan said it depends on if that trustee has changed their mind or not. To add to the head-scratching: the village’s legal counsel was not at the meeting. Another trustee was also absent.
Sollberger said it would cost $750 per call where PFD is needed, so a yearly cost can be hard to determine if they don’t know how many calls they would respond to. They also estimated a 4-minute response time for Peoria Heights calls, something PHFD and residents called into question.
In a previous Facebook post, the village said they would still keep the volunteer department but also utilize PFD to fill in the gaps.
PHFD has struggled to keep volunteers.
“I would hope that professional volunteer firefighters serving alongside paid professional firefighters would strengthen our department,” Trustee Beth Khazzam said. Khazzam called the validity of Wisenburg’s motion into question.
Beyond the cost and logistics, the dozens of residents who spoke out to the council simply did not want PFD firefighters responding to Peoria Heights calls.
Heather McMeekan has a decade of EMT experience. She recently retired to Peoria Heights and strongly opposed the contract before the council, saying local first responders who knew the area and people were vital.
“I always had to rely on the first responders who lived in that community,” McMeekan said. “I didn’t know anything about most of those patients, but they did.”
Phelan said the details regarding the reversal motion will be ironed out at the board’s next meeting in two weeks.
