VILLAGE OF EAST SYRACUSE – An informational meeting was held March 18 to educate local residents about the East Syracuse Fire Department’s services and update them on its coverage changes.
The info session in the cafeteria of East Syracuse Elementary was tailored to residents and business owners of the northern portion of the town of DeWitt, the village itself, and surrounding areas.
During his presentation, East Syracuse Fire Chief Paul Haynes went over the background behind the DeWitt Town Board’s recent decision to terminate its longstanding fire agreement with the village and opt for the DeWitt Fire Department to provide fire protection to the northern district starting this year.
Haynes said one of the town board’s biggest concerns with East Syracuse’s fire department was its late response to a trailer park fire in 2022.
Haynes, who has been a firefighter with the village for over 30 years, said that was a distinctly bad day in the department’s history and that he “doesn’t remember anything like that ever happening before.”
That was the same year the department introduced the pager-like “I Am Responding” monitoring and mapping software that says what crews are on duty and lists notes on certain buildings and hydrants so first responders have better knowledge and an advantage going into a fire.
East Syracuse’s department, which started in 1888, has since hired Haynes as its full-time chief and it has gone to a staffing model that calls for its volunteers to occupy the fire house every night from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
That’s to make sure an apparatus will always be out on the road right away during the overnight hours, with other volunteers coming from their homes to be the second and third waves of assistance.
Haynes said East Syracuse’s response times are now “pretty on par” with DeWitt’s, citing the statistics found in the Emergency Management section of ongov.net.
After the DeWitt Town Board denied the contract East Syracuse Fire put in to supplement its volunteers with the hiring of eight paid firefighters and money to put toward additional equipment, the town put out a request for proposal (RFP) open to any department to bid on for coverage of the parts of its overall district.
Though Haynes said it was well within the town’s right to go the route of an RFP process, he argues its choice of DeWitt Fire over East Syracuse Fire was made after a “backdoor deal” that involved little to no negotiation with East Syracuse’s department.
Haynes also said that over a four-year span the East Syracuse Fire District didn’t receive any increases in funding, while the DeWitt Fire District’s budget went up over $1 million.
He also mentioned how several years ago East Syracuse Fire, alongside the DeWitt Police and EAVES Ambulance, asked for a tax to be placed on the local hotels to go toward emergency services as a way to compensate for how often they needed to respond to those buildings. The town board didn’t allow that to go through but did approve a hotel tax to go into Carrier Park and surrounding improvements to benefit recreational tourism.
In comparing the two districts, Haynes said the tax rates right now in 2025 stand at $1 per $1,000 if one resides in the East Syracuse Fire District, which as it was amounted to just over 13 square miles, and $3 per $1,000 if they live in the roughly eight square miles comprising the DeWitt Fire District.
The northern part of the town contains almost 30 hotels, sites responsible for more than half of the manufacturing in Onondaga County, apartment complexes, and sections of three highways and Syracuse Hancock International Airport.
Haynes said East Syracuse’s department has grown familiar with handling hazards in that area and has the equipment and apparatuses necessary to do so.
Scott McInnis, the president of the East Syracuse Fire Department, said the switch to DeWitt Fire’s career department to cover that northern district will likely need to account for salary increases and overtime payments to make up for the greater amount of responsibility, the hiring of more personnel to adequately respond to calls there, and purchases of much of the same equipment and vehicles East Syracuse had already bought in order to cover that district, only at higher costs than they paid 10 years ago.
McInnis said it also should be factored in that DeWitt’s firefighters would be coming from the station they’re now occupying on Sanders Creek Parkway, but with backup originating from their further-away station on East Genesee Street rather than the village’s closer North Center Street station.
Residents in attendance at last week’s East Syracuse meeting criticized what they viewed as a lack of transparency on the part of the DeWitt Town Board and a “last-minute decision” with regard to the northern district’s fire protection. One woman said it’s the lives of everyone’s family members and their homes, not just money, at stake whenever the issue at hand has to do with fire service.
Haynes said it’s not just fire calls that East Syracuse’s department focuses on; it has also benefited the Burn Foundation of Central New York with its yearly Burn Run at Station 2, and its members take part in village events and lead educational activities year-round.
Whatever their opinions on the situation are, attendees of the March 18 information session were encouraged to voice them in person at the DeWitt Town Board’s March 25 meeting, which was scheduled to inform the public from the side of the town board and DeWitt’s fire department with the goal being to officially extend the DeWitt Fire District and dissolve the East Syracuse fire protection district, leaving the latter department’s firefighters to cover just the two square miles of village.
