Rural fire district deals with internal conflict, missing records

It’s safe to say that the McCormick Fire District has been in conflict recently. The rural McCormick community rests in the hills northeast of Troy, near the Idaho state border. It’s a modest district: five members sit on the board of directors and the firefighting staff ranges from five to six people.

In May, McCormick Fire Chief Corwin Harris and his five firefighters each resigned in protest of the actions taken by the board of directors. Harris said his resignation was the product of issues within the department: missing records, equipment left unmaintained for years and what appeared to be little motivation to fix the problems.

Harris, 24, of McCormick, took over as fire chief in early 2015. Prior to his tenure, he said issues had been building, prompting a records search by a board member, Kathy Humberg, who was not reelected to the position earlier this year.

Humberg said she believes she was the last layer of insulation between the firefighters and alleged mismanagement by the other board of directors. For the past year and a half, she’s been trying to fill in the gaps of the McCormick Fire District’s records: training certificates, financial records, over $1,000 raised in a fundraiser last year and more.

Because the McCormick Fire District is small, there isn’t a complex $100,000 budget, or a bookkeeper on staff to manage it. Humberg said that duty usually falls to the fire chief. The district has usually operated on just $12,000 but received $16,000 this year after last summer’s fire season was so extreme. The failure to keep records of purchases, insurance policies, receipts for general transactions and equipment from the fire hall leaves Humberg unable to quantify how much capital in cash and assets is missing from the McCormick Fire Department, but she said she has identified over $19,000 missing from the budgets over a five- or six- year period. A small amount, about $1,000 has been recovered since Humberg began her search over a year and a half ago.

“I know there is more missing,” Humberg said. “I cannot identify what’s missing because there has not been a paper trail with the purchases.”

Humberg hasn’t only been unable to find the records; she said she’s not getting the cooperation from other board members in the search for the missing records.

Humberg took matters to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office when over $1,000 raised in a fundraiser for the fire department went missing before it was deposited. She said a county detective told her that the matter would be handled in-house by the McCormick district. The money is yet to be located.

McCormick Fire District Board Member Trevor Pelling has taken over as interim fire chief since the entire fire team resigned two months ago. He’s been in the community for more than 20 years and has been a part of the district ever since.

Pelling was involved in the in-house investigation to locate the missing fundraiser money. Pelling said the investigation found that the money was collected and counted out after the auction. He said Brook Harris, who helped host the fundraiser, put the money in a bag and gave the money to “a certain member of the community,” who never deposited the cash.

But Pelling refused to comment on who that member of the community was or why the money wasn’t deposited.

“I really don’t want to say,” Pelling said. “It’s almost like water under the bridge.”

The case file from Humberg’s report to the sheriff’s office is still open. It reads “Bookkeeper called and wanted to talk about missing funds,” and that’s all. Pelling said board member Linda Lundin has in the past taken on secretarial duties for the board, keeping records in some form. Lundin did not return calls made by The Western News for comment.

Pelling said he and the other long-time board members involved, Lundin and John Driebush, have been cooperative with Humberg’s request for documents. The problem, he said, is that the records simply aren’t there. He said he was also concerned about the missing training certificates over the past few years; without them, several past crew members haven’t accumulated hours towards their state benefit package.

Pelling located those records that were missing from 2012, ’13, ‘14 and turned them into the state last month.

Pelling said the district is currently in the rebuilding phases. A lighter fire risk this summer has provided the district time to train the new crew composed of firefighters from nearby or those who have recently come out of retirement.

Harris, the former McCormick Fire Chief, now works with the Bull Lake Fire District. He’s also trying to move on from the conflicts at McCormick, where he still lives as a resident.

Humberg, no longer on the board, said she is currently working on the language for a recall petition to remove Pelling, Driebush and Lundin from the district’s board of directors.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.