From:	Roc Ahrens [roc.ahrens@gmail.com]
Sent:	Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:20 AM
To:	Michael Paschall
Subject:	Great Bill

Dear Mr Paschall,

Thank you for your efforts on HB 170.  I have been on the HVFD in Haines since 1974, and 
served as Chief for many years and am currently the Assistant Chief since the Haines Borough 
appointed me Incident Commander of the Borough in the event of a disaster.  So I know how 
hard it is to recruit and hold members as volunteers.  It seems fewer and fewer of our younger 
folks are interested in volunteering these days.  We have always had good interest on the EMS 
side, but not the Fire side of our department.  This last year, the HVFD paid for the annual fees 
for the "Life Flight" service for all of our members as an incentive to interest new members.

This sounds like a great program, but know the cities will be concerned about the loss of revenue, 
and I talked to the Chief this morning about your bill and how we could work with the Borough 
(by defining "Active Member", to limit the exemption to only the members that are active in 
training and attending calls for some reasonable required time frame (to be determined - like 75% 
of the year or so).  This would help us & the Borough to have truly active members.  We have 
some members that work out of town in the mines etc. that are only available to us six months 
out of the year at best.  This also limits the training they can attend, but offer back up for us 
when they are in town if we have a big event.  But they would not qualify for the tax break 
because of their limited service, which I think would make it fair to both the Fire Department 
and the Borough.  So I see this Bill as something we would have to work with our Borough to 
qualify.

Another possibility would be to base the % of the tax break to the % of training and calls the 
person attended during that tax year.

Thank you again,

Roc Ahrens
Assistant Chief
Haines Volunteer Fire Dept. 
 
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