There are changes ahead to East Pierce Fire and Rescue’s volunteer firefighter program following a June 21 meeting of the fire district’s Board of Commissioners.

The board this past week approved a memo of understanding between the district and the firefighters union to limit at 55 the number of volunteers in East Pierce’s program and to allow sleeper volunteers at two of the district’s stations.

The changes to the sleeper program will only take effect at the station in Milton and Station 15, located on the northeast side of Lake Tapps near Tapps Island.

There are presently about 70 volunteers in the East Pierce program.

Respond-from-home volunteers will now also only respond to stations that are not staffed with career firefighters.

According to Chief Jerry Thorsen, the changes allow the department to improve coverage in a few areas by keeping staff at stations that are presently unmanned and respond-from-home-only.

“In the end, I think it will help us to improve service,” Thorsen said.

According to Thorsen, the change was predicated on Milton’s volunteer fire department being brought into East Pierce.

“They did things fairly different from how we did them,” he said.

Fire Commission Chairman Rick Kuss, who began his career as a volunteer firefighter in Sumner, said the changes will allow quicker response times from the stations involved, which are respond-from-home only.

Kuss said allowing three volunteers to stay at each of those stations means cutting out the time it would normally take the volunteers to get to the station.

“That’s four or five minutes cut off response right there,” he said.

Kuss, who has been on the fire commission for 21 years, said the fire district grew rapidly over the past 15 years and is moving toward a more career-based firefighter model.

“The volunteer program was destined to make some changes,” he said.

But Kuss said despite rumors that have been flying since the beginning of the year, the program is not going away.

“We have such a large district, we need volunteers,” he said.

Kuss and Thorsen both said that some of the district’s more rural stations do not have a high enough call volume to warrant permanently-staffed career stations.

The MOU passed by a vote of 7-4.

Commissioner Rick Kilbourn said he voted against the measure not necessarily because he disagreed with the content – which he labeled as operations and something he said he usually leaves to the chiefs – but because he was unhappy with how the issue was brought before the commission.

“It kind of felt like we didn’t have a choice,” he said.

Commissioner Ed Egan also voted against the measure and said he did so because he did not like setting a limit on the number of people who could volunteer, especially as the district grows to incorporate other districts and city departments.

“They all have volunteers and I think to set a quota of 55 … it seems like a number that is unfair to the current volunteers,” he said.

Thorsen said no current volunteers would be forced to leave the program and the 55-volunteer limit would be reached through attrition as volunteers leave the program.