The Mount Vernon Fire Department provided an annual report of the department at the April 20 Mount Vernon City Council meeting.

Chief Nate Goodlove said the department has 37 volunteers.

“That’s down from our height of 40 or more members, but honestly, this is an adequate service for us,” Goodlove said. “Every volunteer accounts for roughly $10,000 in gear to outfit.”

They recently added six new members to the department.

The Cadets program will be graduating two members this spring and Goodlove said he hopes to recruit more high schoolers to the program in the future.

Calls for service for the department were 350, compared to 310 for last year. With the additional auto aid calls for Lisbon Fire Department and Lisbon Mount Vernon Ambulance Service, Goodlove said that is probably more than 560 calls per year.

“A lot of our volunteers are likely getting pager fatigue from all of that activity,” Goodlove said.

One of the huge benefits for the department was the creation of their new training facility on Bryant Road.

“It allows us to be able to train our volunteers in real life scenarios we may encounter on calls,” Goodlove said. “It’s something very few departments our size have.”

The plan is for a training day with other agencies in late spring/early summer to allow other departments to utilize and see the facility as well.

That facility was helped by fundraising at the annual pancake breakfast. This year, that breakfast saw roughly 1,500 people on Easter weekend and raised more than $20,000.

Mehrdad Zarifkar, president of the Mount Vernon Volunteer Fire Department Association (the 501 c 3 arm of the department) said that he has been working to get grants to help the department.

“We try to do more targeted grants to keep our asks to the community to the one event a year to support us,” Zarifkar said.

Part of the benefits of the non-profit arm was the donations that were received for the training facility, including some private donations that helped make that a reality within the first year of fundraising for the facility.

“We have a lot of sweat equity that’s also been put into that facility as well,” Zarifkar said.

Council person Sherene Hansen Player encouraged the department to come up with costs for other departments utilizing the facility earlier.

Goodlove said most of that would be the consumables that cost to use it, items like straw bales.