YOUNGSVILLE, La. (KLFY) – The Youngsville Fire Department has announced they will be scaling back on responding to calls located outside Youngsville city limits.

Last week, on April 19, the Youngsville Volunteer Fire Department board of directors voted to scale back noncontractual services to the unincorporated area of Lafayette Parish.

“In essence, what that means is that effective May 31, the Youngsville Fire Department will no longer be responding to largely medical calls, EMS calls for cardiac arrest, heart problems, chest pains, breathing difficulty, drowning, choking, strokes, or fainting,” Youngsville Mayor Ken Ritter said.

Ritter said the reason for this decision is that while 30% of the Youngsville Fire Department’s calls are to the unincorporated areas of Lafayette parish, only 3.15% of the funding comes from outside of the city of Youngsville.

“Therefore, it is the opinion of the Youngsville Fire Department’s board of directors that there’s insufficient funding from the parish government to subsidize the calls that are being run outside of the city limits of Youngsville,” Ritter said.

Calls will start to be scaled back starting May 31.

“The city of Youngsville’s Fire Department is still under contractual obligation until November to continue responding for structural fires, and we are in the process of reviewing that contract and that relationship as well,” Ritter said.

The Youngsville Volunteer Fire Department is a vendor to Lafayette Parish in providing these services and the revenue stream to provide these services to the Youngsville Fire Department as a vendor has just not kept up with the growth of the department.

“We can no longer justify 30% of our calls to the unincorporated area in exchange for 3% of the department’s funding,” Ritter said. “It’s just not prudent for the Youngsville city taxpayer and it’s incumbent on the Lafayette parish council to make a determination as to the value of fire protection in the unincorporated area.”