Many of the volunteers with the St. Joseph Township Volunteer Fire Department like to say that their fathers were the ones who went door to door in the early 1950s, raising money to start the department, and that those same men even built the firehouse with their own hands.

Many of their sons and their sons’ sons are volunteers now, and the subsequent generations have added to the fire department, building more buildings, also with their own hands.

Today, the department has 10 pieces of equipment, including ambulances, ladder trucks and pumpers, 15 paid firefighters and about 50 certified volunteers, some of them professional firefighters and paramedics with other departments.

All in all, it’s a pretty impressive place for a volunteer operation.

But all is not well.

Late last year, the township trustee, Richard Uhrick, put together an agenda, asking, among other things, whether the township was getting the “best bang for its buck” for the $330,000 or so it spends on the volunteer department each year.

The agenda also proposed investigating whether the township should contract with other departments for fire protection and ambulance service.

About five weeks ago, at a township advisory board meeting, Uhrick announced he would be seeking bids and proposals for providing fire and ambulance service in 2012.

In other words, there was a real possibility the department could shut down by the end of the year.

Firefighters and volunteers with the department aren’t happy. They deliver an important service, they say.

The number of runs they make is increasing, they say, showing figures that showed 479 runs in 2008, 545 in 2010, and about the same number this year. Most of the runs are ambulance runs, and a lot of those are made because no other ambulance is available.

Meanwhile, they worry about four volunteers who actually live in bedrooms at the firehouse. In exchange, they are responsible for responding to all calls between midnight and 6 a.m. and can be on the road within a minute, they say. If the fire department closes, those four will need to find other places to live.

Senior members of the fire department say it doesn’t make sense to shut them down. In the last 15 months, the trustee spent around half a million dollars on four new pieces of equipment – a pickup truck, a rig for fighting grass fires, a new tanker and an ambulance. Now Uhrick is talking about eliminating the entire operation.

The budget for volunteers is $32,500 a year, and it is divvied up among volunteers based on how many runs each volunteer makes. It just about pays for their gas, the volunteers say. If money is an issue, though, they say, they’ll work for a dollar.

Meanwhile, volunteers are bristling because they say Uhrick referred to them as vendors. They view themselves as the heart and soul of the department, not pop salesmen.

We talked to Uhrick about what was going on at the department.

Yes, he says, he has lawyers working on a request for proposals – a request that other area departments submit bids for fire and ambulance coverage for the unincorporated area of the township.

The actual request for proposals hasn’t been finished, though, and no one has been approached about providing coverage.

“There’s not much to say,” Uhrick said. “All I’m doing is getting prices and options. Runs are down (which firefighters dispute), and I’ve got a station full of equipment,” including a 100-foot ladder truck. “I’m charging taxpayers for it. It’s not fair if I overspend” on the department.

Once, Uhrick said, the department was responsible for taking care of 40,000 people in the township, but since most of the township has been annexed to Fort Wayne, which has its own firehouses nearby, the volunteers cover only about 5,500 people and 1,200 properties.

Meanwhile, Uhrick said, he has to spend considerable money to have each piece of equipment inspected and certified each year, and they have to be insured. Insurance on a $1 million ladder truck is steep, he said.

Has he considered downsizing? I asked.

“I have suggested downsizing, but I get nothing but a fight,” Uhrick said.

If he were to negotiate contracts with other departments, it’s likely the equipment in the firehouse now would be sold, Uhrick said.

“It has value,” he said of the equipment.

There has been little, if any, public discussion of his proposal, though. The meeting at which it was announced Uhrick would be seeking bids for fire and EMS, and to close the volunteer department, lasted only 10 minutes, and only the trustee, his advisory board and the fire chief attended.

“It’s only fair to the taxpayers,” Uhrick said. “It’s a business situation.”