Neither the Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department nor the Van Buren Township trustee and advisory board got everything they asked for from Judge Judith Stewart before Christmas.

In a 15-page ruling issued Dec. 20, Stewart explained the rights of the volunteer firefighters and of the elected trustee and advisory board according to their contract, which is in place until 2019.

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The parties have been paying lawyers to argue in court for them for more than 18 months about a variety of issues, including payment of contract money, release of financial records and firefighter response records, general control of how the fire department is run and other disagreements.

Her ruling does not end their disputes, however.

Stewart said that several issues brought up in the latest round of court filings would have to go to trial because there are “genuine issues of material fact,” and those are not appropriate for a judge to decide in summary judgment.

UPDATE: Van Buren Township Advisory Board member Ben Phillips said last week that the board will meet in executive session with its lawyer after the first of the year to decide what to do next. Without that discussion, he said he wasn’t sure whether or not the board would proceed with a trial.

“All options are on the table,” he said.

“If you have an employee there at work, and they have certain job responsibilities and they say they aren’t going to do them, you’d probably fire them,” Phillips said. “That’s the position they have put us in.”

“We haven’t made up our minds on anything. That’s why we’re going to have an executive session to talk to our attorney and see where he stands, where we stand. We’re reasonable people.”

Fire department board member Heather Stafford said last week that the board hadn’t met with its lawyer yet to discuss the ruling or how they might proceed.

With no fire protection contract money coming in from the township trustee since the fall of 2014, the fire department has been paying its bills through donations and fundraisers. In depositions and other court documents related to the latest case, department members said it was becoming difficult to keep the doors open.

Here’s what the ruling did decide:

• Under the terms of the current contract between the Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department and the Van Buren Township trustee, the fire department will not have to release “personal identifiers” of the people it has helped, with the exception of public information such as an address. Stewart wrote that personal identifiers include such details as date of birth, health information and Social Security numbers. She said there is no requirement in the contract for the fire department to provide that information to the board or trustee; however, her ruling does not prohibit the trustee and fire department from voluntarily sharing information from run records or from rewriting the contract in the future to include sharing that information.
• The fire department has to release its “compete financial records” to the trustee and advisory board, including those that relate to fundraisers and donations, receipts and disbursements. The fire department argued that it has “made available” those documents, but the trustee disputes that; that will need to be resolved at trial if the parties want further clarification on what “make available” means, whether it’s making copies or allowing the trustee and board to inspect originals.
• The trustee and board will have to review requests the fire department makes for money from the cumulative fire fund, which the trustee collects from township taxpayers for the fire department’s use. However, the court cannot order the trustee and board to “establish a workable procedure” for submitting and reviewing these requests.
• The trustee will have to pay clothing and automobile allowances of not less than $100 per year to each active and participating member of the fire department. The trustee said in a deposition that she understood that money to be included in the $16,000 contract amount; however, the fire chief said he was not told that. Because the parties did not contract otherwise, Stewart ruled on basis of state law, which says the parties are supposed to provide an amount for clothing and vehicles in the contract between them. However, the judge said the fire department is not entitled to a ruling that back payments are owed or that any future payments are owed. It must be determined at trial if the $16,000 annual fire protection contract includes these allowances.

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Here’s what the judge said she couldn’t rule on:

• The central allegations each side made toward the other about breach of contract. Those must proceed to trial if they want a ruling.
• The fire department’s alleged right to receive money owed for 2014 ($5,000) and 2015 ($16,000). Stewart said that depends on whether or not the fire department first breached the contract, which is something that could be resolved at trial. She said it’s not clear if the fire department “made its financial records available to the trustee and board in an meaningful manner, and further, whether any failure of the fire department in this regard constitutes a material breach of contract.”
• Issues the fire department raised about whether or not the trustee and board have a right to be involved in the way the fire department is run or how the building is used. Those must be resolved at trial, as terms such as “supervision” or “affairs” are not defined in the contract, Stewart wrote.

Trustee Vicki Payne and her advisory board raised a new argument at the last court hearing in November alleging that the Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department was not properly supervising its affairs and did not meet minimum standards to operate as a fire department.

Stewart ruled that the contract between the fire department and the trustee’s office does not require a certain level of staffing, response rates, etc.; it only says that the fire department will “so far as reasonably possible, answer all calls in due and diligent manner” and “make all reasonable efforts to give the best protection possible.”

Whether or not there was a breach of contract in the way the trustee alleges is an issue to be resolved at trial, she said.