Disagreement between town and county leaves local business with bill

Miriam Ostermann
Times Associate Editor

 

A local businessman became the middleman between the Town of Strathmore and the County of Wheatland, after the Strathmore Fire Department attended to a garbage truck fire on county property, for which he is now expected to foot the bill.
On Feb. 23, Colin Huxted received a call from one of his drivers regarding a fire that started in the back of his garbage truck. After a few failed attempts to douse the fire with an extinguisher, the Strathmore Fire Department was dispatched when the Strathmore Rural Fire Department – operated by Wheatland County – was unable to attend.
As a mutual aid agreement is currently nonexistent between the Town of Strathmore and the County of Wheatland, the town sent an invoice to the county for over $7,000.
However, upon reviewing the invoice on May 5, county council passed the buck to Huxted to claim the incident through his insurance, as the vehicle fire occurred on a Wheatland County road allowance and not Huxted’s property.
Yet, Huxted refused to pay the bill, arguing that he pays fire tax for his properties in both the county and the town, and since the services only alluded to $7,353, it wasn’t enough to be covered by his insurance.
“I only carry insurance if we have more than $10,000 claims, otherwise with 50 to 60 vehicles, you can never afford it,” said Huxted. “I donate to both those fire departments, and I helped them build those places and I’m not paying for something like that. There’s Gray’s, there’s Rattray, there’s all kinds of companies like me that are working in the town and in the county. So are we covered or aren’t we?”
Wheatland County did encourage Huxted to address the issue with the town as the responding department, and to where the Strathmore-based business pays its business taxes.
While the county agreed to send a representative to the town with Huxted, he felt the issue should be settled between the county and the town.
“This is going to get political and it’s going to get messy because I shouldn’t be in the middle,” Huxted said. “The county told me that I had to take this up with the town and I said I will. But it doesn’t make sense that you guys aren’t playing well in the sandbox and I have to get involved. I have a business to run. I would’ve been better off to let my truck burn out there, nobody show up, and collect $100,000 for my truck.”
Late last year, the Town of Strathmore withdrew from the mutual aid agreement with Wheatland County that ensured either department would come to the aid of the other when needed at no charge. While no new agreement has yet been agreed upon, Wheatland County representatives assured that the municipality is providing fire protection services to every resident and ratepayer within Wheatland County.
“Wheatland County continues to work at securing a mutual aid agreement with the Strathmore Fire Department, as we have in place with all other surrounding fire departments,” said Wheatland County Reeve Glenn Koester. “Such an agreement would mean that we would help one another out at no charge. In fact, if any of the Wheatland County Fire Departments were asked to respond to a fire in the town of Strathmore, there would be no bill issues from Wheatland County.”
Although the Town of Strathmore refused to comment at this time, before the issue is brought before council, they did mention it will most likely be scheduled for the Oct. 23 meeting.