Organization - Staffing - Leadership

Board of Trustees

You are represented by an elected Board of Trustees. The current board includes:

Chairman - Randy Larimer
Vice Chair - Dave Kraft
Treasurer - Pete Geddes
Secretary - Chuck Rogers
Trustee - Carl Robertson

Duties of Trustees of Sourdough Fire District:

The five trustees are elected by registered voters living within the fire district, or by landowners who present proof of such to the Gallatin Co. Elections Office. They are responsible by statute for making sure there is “adequate and standard firefighting and emergency response apparatus, equipment, personnel, housing, and facilities, including real property and emergency medical services, for the protection of the district”.

The trustees receive no salary for their duties. They serve a 3 year term that has no term limits. The five trustees serve staggered terms. They approve the annual budget. They set the goals. They monitor to see that the fire chief is making progress in meeting those goals in a satisfactory manner. 



Firefighter and Firefighter/EMT
Volunteer

The firefighters of SFD train hundreds of hours per year and can be seen at the Cottonwood Road training facility every Tuesday night, year around 7:00 pm to 11:00 or 12:00 midnight, depending on calls. SFD firefighters train to national standards. In 2008 SDF firefighters contributed over 13000 hours to the Sourdough fire district at no cost to the tax payer.

All SFD members are volunteers and receive no pay. The estimated savings are $1 million annually for the tax payer’s of the Sourdough fire district.

Administrative Support

Kate works for SFD part-time (16 hours per week) as an administrative support person. Kate’s duties include insurance review, local, state and federal regulatory compliance, insurance evaluation, subdivision review, grant writing and administration and interlocal agreement drafting. We are very fortunate to have someone with Kate’s experience assisting us with the day to day administrative duties that keeps our 30 plus Volunteers available for emergency response.

The cost to maintain this position for Sourdough Fire District is $24,150 annually. Her work has netted SFD approximately $46,000 in grant monies and insurance savings to Sourdough Fire District as of May 1, 2009. Her salary is split three ways through an interlocal agreement between Sourdough, Rae and Amsterdam fire departments.

SFD Maintenance Technician

The department funds a part-time (20 hrs per wk) maintenance technician. The maintenance tech keeps the equipment running in support of over 30 Volunteers. He is a volunteer firefighter and responds to emergencies during the day during the week.

By having a maintenance tech, it prevents taking equipment out of service for several hours or days. The maintenance tech maintains 3 fire stations with 4 buildings, a training facility, 10 fire trucks and hundreds of pieces of safety equipment. He has found numerous pieces of equipment needing repair which has saved the district hundreds of dollars and assured the safety of our firefighters. The labor cost is actually less than half by doing minor repairs rather than outsourcing to a local repair shop.

The salary cost to Sourdough Fire Department for this position is $12,480 annually.