Newburg Volunteer Fire Department’s takeover of Pinecroft Volunteer Fire Company OK’d
Judge approves merger of fire companies
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Blair County Judge David Consiglio recently approved the absorption of Pinecroft Volunteer Fire Company of Antis Township by the Newburg Volunteer Fire Department of Logan Township, with Newburg taking over Pinecroft's building, apparatus and equipment.
Consiglio approved the transfer of the Pinecroft assets in spite of opposition from Antis Township, which argued that those assets should remain with Antis, based on their having been financed in large part by money from township residents.
Pinecroft is merging with Newburg in the aftermath of Pinecroft being decertified by the Antis supervisors for refusing to be absorbed by the Excelsior Fire Department of Bellwood -- a borough surrounded by Antis Township.
A merger of those two companies had been recommended by each of two fire service studies conducted for Antis by the state within the previous several years.
The supervisors considered Excelsior the stronger of the two, based on call history and levels of firefighter training.
Despite Consiglio's ruling in favor of Pinecroft, the company remains decertified, and as a firefighting unit, its identity has disappeared into Newburg's.
Approximately 10 Pinecroft firefighters have become firefighters for Newburg, with an additional 15 social members becoming social members at Newburg, according to Newburg Fire Chief Mike Zeigler who spoke with the Mirror at the Pinecroft building Sunday, along with Newburg Deputy Chief Matt Clinger, Newburg Fire Association President Shannon Snyder, Stacy Kustaborder, a Pinecroft member who will become a Newburg trustee at the end of the month, when the merger takes effect, and her husband Lance, who will become assistant secretary of Newburg.
All firefighting operations will be conducted out of the Newburg station on Washington Avenue, according to Clinger.
The identity of the 103-year-old Pinecroft company will be kept alive, however, via the company's old building, which will be called the Newburg Pinecroft Civic Center.
It will be used for storage of vehicles and equipment and for firefighter trainings and fundraisers; and it will be available for community service purposes like voting and as a warming or cooling center; and as a rental venue for birthday parties and wedding receptions, according to Clinger.
The transition will strengthen Newburg's firefighting capability because of the additional manpower and additional equipment, and because some of the newcomers will be available to respond to daytime calls, Zeigler said.
The decertification was upsetting, according to Stacy Kustaborder.
Pinecroft was enduring hostility when merger talks began, Clinger said.
"But we don't feel there is any more hostility now," he said. "We pulled them away from the hostility and now here we are."
"The moral of the story is we're all happy," Clinger stated.
The case
The Pinecroft company is not "owned, operated or controlled by any municipality," Pinecroft lawyer Joe Addink argued in his petition for merger approval.
Rather, the organization is an "independent Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation that holds title to its own real property, apparatus and equipment," he wrote.
The decertification by Antis applied only to Pinecroft's right to serve that township as an authorized firefighting body, not to ownership of the assets, Addink wrote.
Upon dissolution of the corporation, those assets shall be "distributed exclusively to charitable, religious, scientific, literary or educational organizations qualifying under" Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code, he stated, citing the articles of incorporation.
Nothing in those articles calls for those assets to revert to "any municipality, donor or other person," according to Addink.
Newburg is an ideal destination for those assets because its charitable purpose is "substantially similar and compatible, and each governing document expressly contemplates the rendering of fire and emergency services beyond the corporations' primary service areas through mutual aid," with no geographic limitation, according to Addink.
The Pinecroft station is only a mile from Logan Township, where Newburg is located, according to Addink.
The merger will therefore "result in no diversion of any property of Pinecroft from the objects and purposes" for which the Antis Township company had been created, according to Addink.
Instead, becoming one with Newburg will "preserve that property in active service to a substantially similar charitable purpose, benefiting substantially the same class of beneficiaries," Addink wrote. "No alternative disposition of Pinecroft's charitable property, including any receivership or liquidation, would preserve that property in active service to its charitable purpose as effectively."
The township disagrees.
To start with, the township "does not consent to the jurisdiction of the Court of Common Pleas of Blair County," wrote township solicitor Patrick Fanelli in his answer to Addink's petition.
Further, the governing documents for Pinecroft don't "contemplate the rendering of fire and emergency services beyond any primary service area" or without geographic limitation, Fanelli wrote.
Diverting the Pinecroft assets to Newburg doesn't preserve them for "substantially the same class of beneficiaries," he wrote.
"On the contrary, the assets will be serving a substantially different class of beneficiaries," Fanelli wrote.
Also contrary to Addink's claims, an effective alternative destination for the Pinecroft assets can be found within Antis, he wrote.
That is Excelsior, he implied in his brief.
Diverting the assets to Logan instead is not in the best interests of the people who paid the taxes or contributed the money to sustain Pinecroft over the years, according to Fanelli.
The value of Pinecroft's assets, including savings, is about $979,000, according to Addink's petition.
Throughout Pinecroft's history, the Antis supervisors have diverted significant sums to Pinecroft for workers compensation, along with "hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions in the form of discretionary cash donations," Fanelli wrote.
The supervisors have also directed state firemen's relief money to help the company, he wrote.
For the most recent 2.5 years of its existence, Pinecroft has assisted Newburg only once, he wrote.
"A diversion of assets from Pinecroft to Newburg would not be appropriate or cognizant with Pinecroft's charitable purpose," he wrote.
The ruling is "disappointing," Fanelli wrote to the Mirror Thursday in a text.
The township will be considering its options, said Fanelli and Township Manager Doug Brown on Thursday.
The state Attorney General's office had no objection to the merger, according to court documents.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.