Seneca moves to cancel rural fire agreement

A matter of potential concern for property owners within five miles of the Seneca corporate limits reared itself following a closed-door meeting last night at city hall.  All hands flew up on a motion to notify Oconee County that Seneca will not renew an inter-government agreement that provides fire protection and first response services covering a radius of five miles beyond the corporate limits.  That’s unless, as the city administrator later explained, the county comes forth with an additional annual payment to the city in the amount of $950 thousand.  It fell to Ronnie O’Kelley, the mayor pro-tem, to voice the motion following an approximate 30-minute executive session.  Besides the mayor and council, participating in the executive session were the city fire chief and the city attorney.  Without the help of the city’s paid, full-time staff of fire fighters, those within the five-mile radius would be left to rely on the county’s volunteer rural fire departments, such as Friendship, Bountyland, and Corinth-Shiloh.  In recent years, county government has begun to fund some paid, full-time fire fighters for the rural stations.  However, for the most part, the firefighting rolls of those stations are primarily volunteers.  And, of late, the rural fire system has found it increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers.