The Genesee County Fire Advisory Board Administrative Working Group presented plans to strengthen the county’s Fire and EMS services at GCC on Tuesday March 31st, 2026.
According to Genesee County Fire Coordinator Tim Yaeger, the Board is hoping to move forward after reviewing the questions they received during Tuesday night’s meeting. He says the next step is a higher-level commitment from the volunteer fire companies as a whole to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
“It’s not financial commitment; it’s a commitment for the project and the ideas that we’re coming up with and suggestions for supplementation to move forward,” says Yaeger.
Next step would be for municipal fire districts and the county to come together to figure out the finances.
“This is something we are going to work on every single month, and I would hope that we have some type of working group to look at the finances by early summer. We really need to get the cost finalized and the buy in finalized because municipalities have to put their budgets together and we know that it takes time. We don’t have a time frame per say, but we want to move this along as fast as possible.”
At the very earliest, Yaeger says they are hoping to have the plan in place in early 2027.
1–Our property taxes in many instances have doubled over the last 2-3 years because housing prices have skyrocketed. I’m sure the county’s costs have not more than doubled in 2 years and if they did the property tax would MORE than cover it. So….WHERE is our money GOING? If it were properly handled the county would have more than enough to cover our needs. 2–To find young volunteers go to where the young are on a regular basis. Schools/College/an internet presence/the YMCAs/etc. to recruit. 3–maybe a discount off property taxes for firefighters/etc. 4–The county needs to do what those who live here have had to do..CUT BACK ON FRIVOLOUS THINGS and maybe we could afford this. 5–stop throwing good money after bad-the GDEC is a PRIMARY example of what I’m talking about. 6–sorry, but NO. I, who live in a small town do NOT want to pay the same price for this as the city does. 7—when someone calls the ambulance and is brought to the ER they should immediately be put into the waiting room if they are deemed a non-actual emergency instead of kept in back. It will take a year or so, but people will learn calling an ambulance just so they don’t have to take their turn will NOT work. That alone should cut back on calls. 8-why should the elderly who can NOT volunteer be penalized by having to pay? (An attendee stated “if they don’t want to volunteer they should pay-basically oh well). Most of US did our time volunteering already-the younger ones don’t want to-as is proven by the average age in the group you have. 9-maybe the county or DSS can offer some type of voucher for a taxi ride to URGENT CARE and this would cut down on over use of ambulance service/ER overcrowding. 10-if this is still true and it costs less for someone on DSS to go to the ER than it costs for a doctor appt-THIS SHOULD BE REVERSED. 11–the county need to start attracting people in higher tax brackets over people who use DSS. THEN we’d have the money for these needed services. STOP giving tax breaks to RETAIL that only hire a few full timers, and more part timers w/zero health insurance. GDEC—start attracting HIGH TECH INDUSTRY! Never mind RETAIL. If the area is flourishing, retail will want to be here and come with NO tax breaks given! The county needs to hire many more police to keep the scum from Buffalo/Rochester coming here to deal their drugs etc. Even if we do it for just a couple of years to rid ourselves of them. We need an over abundance of police-so those w/nefarious ideas wont want to come HERE. Get our schools to where they are THE BEST in the state-check out high functioning schools anywhere in the U.S.-model after them. If we do all of these things we will attract a higher paying tax base and the problem of “how can we afford this” will be gone!
Ps—stop putting up so much rental property/allowing single family homes to be made into apts and DEF. I more rooming houses. Instead find a way to help people to become home OWNERS. There are some cities around the world that have interesting offers to attract home owners.