Millheim Fire Company

All opinions on my website are my own opinion(s) and not the opinion(s) of the Millheim Fire Company.

Cooperative agreement, 2008-07-08.pdf  (Haines Township and Millheim Borough)

Draft Cooperative Agreement, 2015-11-12.docx (rejected by Municipalities, I wasted a lot of my time writing this)

 In 2016 the municipalities proposed an alternate cooperative agreement.

Here is that signed document. Cooperative Agreement, signed by all 2016-11-03.pdf


 

 

Pennsylvania House Bill 1683

An Act amending Title 35 (Health and Safety) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, providing for incentives for municipal volunteers of fire companies and nonprofit emergency medical services agencies.

 Below are the various drafts of the proposed legislation as it progressed through the legislature.

HB1683P2495.DOC

HB1683P2507.DOC

HB1683P3930.DOC

HB1683P4078.DOC

HB1683P4128.DOC (presented to Governor on 14 Nov 16 for signature)

 

This legislation was signed into law by the Governor Tom Wolfe on November 21st, 2016 with an effective date 60 days following and would allow volunteer ambulance and fire personnel to receive a rebate on their local earned income tax and a rebate of of to 20% of their personal residence real estate tax.  This rebate would not be applicable to schools, county, state or federal taxes although technically schools are now a municipality unto themselves in accordance with decisions of the state supreme court.

This legislation was enacted as ACT 172 of 2016 by the Pennsylvania state legislature.

Here is the enacted legislation. 2016 Act 172 - PA General Assembly.pdf 

 

I made this information known to the Penn Township board of supervisors at the November 2016 regular meeting as to the enactment of the legislation and the then pending governor's signature of the legislation.  They were unaware up until that time of the legislation and pending governor's signature.

At an October 2017 informational meeting held at the Penns Valley EMS building to discuss problems with the local Penns Valley Emergency Medical services and their funding (lack thereof) issue as well as lack of volunteers to man the equipment and respond to calls for ambulance services with representatives of every Penns Valley municipality represented, upon my polling of the assembled municipal officials if they had enacted an enabling local resolution or ordinance, not a single municipality has passed an enabling ordinance (Townships) or resolution (Boroughs), nor did any of them indicate that they intended to even consider it, let alone adopt. 

My recommendation to all my fellow volunteers would be January 1, 2018 all fire and ambulance personnel will be officially retired and the individual municipalities will assume all emergency response duties.  So get ready for a 40 fold tax increase to pay for replacing your/our volunteers emergency responders.

On March 22nd, 2019 upon my telephone inquiry to the Penn Township, Centre County municipal secretary as to the procedure to request (make application) to the Township for the rebate that was authorized by the Township in accordance with the enabling state legislation I was informed that I could not request the rebate as the supervisors had not passed an enabling ordinance. When the question as to why they had not done so, the answer given was that it would be too much work for the Township, cost the Township too much money and it was not worth it as well as there are only a couple residents of the township that are volunteer emergency responders.

Below is some reference information that I have gathered.

Act 172 goes into effect.pdf

DCED Act 172-2016 Volunteer Firefighter Tax Credit Guidance v2 2017.pdf

DCED Taxation Manual.pdf

Act 172 of 2016 Guidance and Model Ordinance (5-3-17).pdf

DCED Referendum Handbook 10th Edition 2017.pdf

PA Report on the Volunteer Emergency Services, Fire, Rescue and EMS

95-page legislative study report released Wednesday November 28,2018 warns that Pennsylvania's fire and rescue services face a crisis, saying the number of volunteers continues to fall amid funding needs and training challenges. The report said there were about 300,000 volunteer firefighters in the state in the 1970s, a number that's fallen to about 38,000 currently. 

The report also discusses re-instituting laws requiring home sprinkler system in new homes as a way to save lives and property. The law was shelved because builders claimed that the requirement was cost prohibitive to new home owners and that the builders would lose money.

 

 Here is the actual report.

Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board Legal Opinion

 As there were public allegations made that I was violating Pennsylvania State law or Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board regulation by posting membership applications in the Millheim Fireman's Club on the Millheim Fire Company website I researched and could find no reference which would substantiate that allegation.  I followed up with an inquiry to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board legal department and they have made the determination that confirms that the allegation was unsubstantiated. See the legal opinion by clicking on the link below.

Club Applications Off Premises.pdf

 
 

INFORMATION FOR TEXT MESSAGE ADDRESS

 

 

Your text message address is your 10 digit cell phone number followed by one of the addresses in the table below. Use the address of your cellular telephone service provider. If your provider is not listed below, send a text message from your phone to your email address. When you receive and look at that email, look to see the address that the email came from. That address is your text message address.

 

If your carrier is not in the list below, if you still do not receive text messages from IaR, or if the above process does not work, then you can also go to this website to enter your cell phone number, and you should then use the address identified as the "SMS Gateway Address:" https://freecarrierlookup.com/

PROVIDER

ADDRESS

AT&T Wireless

@txt.att.net

Bell Mobility

@txt.bell.ca

Bell MTS

@txt.mts.net

Boost Mobile

@myboostmobile.com

Cellular One

@cellularone.txtmsg.com or @mobile.celloneusa.com

Fido / Microcell

@fido.ca

FirstNet

@txt.firstnet-mail.com

Illinois Valley Celular

@ivctext.com

Koodo Mobile

@msg.koodomobile.com or @msg.telus.com

Mobilfone

@page.mobilfone.com

Rogers

@sms.rogers.com or @pcs.rogers.com

Sasktel

@sms.sasktel.com

Sprint PCS (now Sprint Nextel)

@messaging.sprintpcs.com

Telus Mobility

@msg.telus.com

T-Mobile

@tmomail.net

Tracfone

@txt.att.net (if this does not work, please try: @mycingular.textmsg.com; or @vtext.com; or @messaging.sprintpcs.com; or @tmomail.net; you may need to manually try each to figure out which carrier you are)

US Cellular

@email.uscc.net

Unicel

@utext.com

Verizon

@vtext.com

Virgin Mobile USA

@vmobl.com