Logan Township was correct in not jumping hastily to put into practice recommendations stemming from a study two years ago dealing with the township’s fire service.

The study, conducted under the auspices of the Governor’s Center for Local Government Services, while a product of good intentions, failed to take into account an important factor in most, if not all, municipalities.

That factor is that communities want to control their own destiny, not be directed by someone from outside of their borders who does not necessarily possess a full understanding of all aspects of the community, including financial factors that routinely and, perhaps, not so routinely, hang over municipal decision-making.

The chief recommendation of the study in question wanted to make Logan’s fire service subservient to an outside individual or entity skilled in making judgments, but perhaps judgments with which township leaders, taxpayers and fire service members might not agree.

That could have created chaos and dissension and undermined morale to the point of putting the fire service’s capabilities at risk of being unable to survive.

Township leaders, fire service and otherwise, would have been fools, had they chosen immediately to jump blindly into what the study proposes without giving the document and recommendations intense scrutiny, including with public involvement in that process.

Because of the nature of the study recommendations, perhaps, in the eyes of municipal and fire service leaders, the study was virtually “dead on arrival,” despite not having been issued such a pronouncement.

However, it is reasonable to suggest that somewhere within the study there must be some information or suggestions that might be valuable for the township to pursue, even if independent of the study’s full scope.

Obviously, benefits and suggestions never can be realized if a study and its suggestions are relegated to some dusty shelf without ever having been totally evaluated — which seems to have occurred with the Logan study.

Yet, some of the study’s other recommendations and points of focus, besides the controversial first one, include recruitment and retention of personnel, billing, member training, preparation of grant applications, responses to calls, “box alarms,” and trust and cooperation among the individual companies.

According to the study, the necessary tools exist in the Logan departments that make up the township’s fire service, but the parties making up the township fire service must be willing to work together better to get maximum use from them.

Improvements on that front are necessary, as noted in Mirror reporter William Kibler’s extensive April 28 article dealing with the township’s fire service study, issues and challenges.

It is easy to recommend that the township put personalities aside, if and when the report comes under closer scrutiny than it has had up to now. However, it is tough to tackle such a major issue without personalities coming into play.

The one thing that seems very clear is that if current township and fire service leaders had truly recognized the study’s conclusions as the solution to the fire service’s issues, the study would not have languished for two years without any serious actions on behalf of it.

Probably the best advice available at this time for the Logan Township fire service is to go back to the proverbial drawing board for the purpose of doing better than what the state study was able to do.

That task should not be impossible.