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| ARBOR DAY TREE PLANTING SPONSORED BY THE TREE BOARD |
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| FIRE HALL AND GARAGE |
There is no excuse for boredom when living in a small community, since there are so many opportunities to volunteer on boards, committees and for various community organizations. I personally was involved in the tree board, and was on various city zoning committees.
Bayfield's firemen and EMTs are an all volunteer force, well trained and on call 24/7.
They raise money to supplement the city equipment budget with an annual raffle and other events. Area fire departments and ambulance services cooperate in combating major fires and in other emergencies, and and a helicopter service is on call for emergency flights to Duluth hospitals.
I remember having to call for the volunteer EMt's while working at the Boerner Botanical Gardens in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, for a woman who fell and broke her leg. It was forty years ago and on a weekend, and the volunteers showed up in tee shirts and bermuda shorts. The woman's husband wouldn't let them touch his wife, and he took her away in their car. I knew all the EMTs, who were either doctors or nurses. You can't judge an EMT by their clothes.
We have lived in communities with both paid and volunteer emergency services, and find them about equal in effectiveness. It is becoming more and more difficult to maintain volunteer services because of declining rural and small town populations, and one way to compensate for that factor is for communities to pay a standby and per-emergency stipend, which helps young people with seasonal or low income regular jobs to stay in the community, and is still far less of a tax burden than hiring full time personnel.
I served on the Bayfield Tree Board for over a decade. We sponsored the annual Arbor Day tree planting, did tree training pruning, cleared stop signs of obstructions, maintained the tree inventory, planted trees, monitored pests and diseases and wrote grants.
Small communities run on volunteerism, and it is easy to be involved, and never bored.
They raise money to supplement the city equipment budget with an annual raffle and other events. Area fire departments and ambulance services cooperate in combating major fires and in other emergencies, and and a helicopter service is on call for emergency flights to Duluth hospitals.
I remember having to call for the volunteer EMt's while working at the Boerner Botanical Gardens in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, for a woman who fell and broke her leg. It was forty years ago and on a weekend, and the volunteers showed up in tee shirts and bermuda shorts. The woman's husband wouldn't let them touch his wife, and he took her away in their car. I knew all the EMTs, who were either doctors or nurses. You can't judge an EMT by their clothes.
We have lived in communities with both paid and volunteer emergency services, and find them about equal in effectiveness. It is becoming more and more difficult to maintain volunteer services because of declining rural and small town populations, and one way to compensate for that factor is for communities to pay a standby and per-emergency stipend, which helps young people with seasonal or low income regular jobs to stay in the community, and is still far less of a tax burden than hiring full time personnel.
I served on the Bayfield Tree Board for over a decade. We sponsored the annual Arbor Day tree planting, did tree training pruning, cleared stop signs of obstructions, maintained the tree inventory, planted trees, monitored pests and diseases and wrote grants.
Small communities run on volunteerism, and it is easy to be involved, and never bored.
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