Waterford — As part-time firefighters consider whether to keep volunteering and stop getting paid — or vice versa — at least two departments could find themselves without chiefs next month.

In a May 2 letter, Fire Services Director Bruce Miller told the town’s 33 part-time firefighters they no longer could volunteer their services in town starting June 14. He said the town will remove anyone who doesn’t respond by the deadline from the part-time paid list.

Cohanzie Public Information Officer Steven Frischling, who has been trying to determine the impact to his own company, said Oswegatchie Chief Mark Schenking and Quaker Hill Chief Monte Fielder plan to resign their volunteer posts.

Messages left for those two chiefs weren’t returned. Miller and the Goshen chief also didn’t respond to messages, and no one answered the Jordan Fire Co.’s main line, which wasn’t accepting voicemail messages.

First Selectman Dan Steward said it isn’t yet clear how many firefighters will choose to stop volunteering or whether any chiefs or high-ranking officers will be among them.

“But we do expect some serious changes to occur,” he said.

The policy change in Waterford, which has five fire companies, comes amid discussions about whether towns including Montville, Preston, Salem and Waterford are violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by allowing paid firefighters to volunteer for their departments.

Among other things, the act says town employees can’t volunteer to provide their employer the same services they are paid to provide.

In the past, the same discussion has delivered no results, in part because state law says towns can’t prohibit town-paid firefighters or emergency personnel from volunteering at fire departments in the towns where they live during their personal time.

This time around, with Montville giving its part-timers the same ultimatum and Preston trying to nearly double its fire staffing budget, seems different.

“This is the federal law,” Steward said. “This is not something that we’ve made up, and (the firefighters) know it.”

The policy change also came after Kevin Ziolkovski, a 57-year-old town firefighter, filed a claim last month seeking payment for all the hours he worked as a volunteer over the last three decades. Ziolkovski told The Day earlier this month he didn’t do it for the money — he did it because “someone needs a hard and fast decision on this so we can move on."

Despite everything, Steward said homeowners shouldn’t be worried. The town has nine full-time paid firefighters who “are more than capable of running a fire scene” and is working to add two more.

Steward also said house fires are rare — the town had five last year — and that “everybody goes” to each blaze, so manpower shouldn’t be an issue.

“We’re looking at some changes within the fire department that we may have had to make anyway,” he said. “We’ve been having issues with who’s in charge at the fire scene.”

But Todd Branche, part-time firefighter and volunteer chief of the Cohanzie company, said manpower is a major concern.

Branche said while some part-timers only volunteer for a shift or two, others respond to up to 20 percent of fire and medical calls.

“The numbers (of volunteers) are thin already,” he said. “Not just here, but around the whole country. It’s definitely going to have impact.”

“When you throw into the mix those officers who have knowledge and service to the town of 20 years, 10 years,” he said, “we’re going to lose hundreds of years of experience and knowledge for them to (be paid for) a few hours.”

Branche said he has decided to stop getting paid June 14 so he can stay on as a volunteer chief. He figures he’ll only lose one volunteer — he has three part-time firefighters and believes two are choosing to volunteer — but said other companies may suffer more.

As the town figures out what to do next, Branche said it should further incentivize people to become volunteer firefighters — something that requires hundreds of hours in training.

Waterford’s volunteer firefighters can get an up to a $1,000 tax abatement, but only if they own real property, volunteer enough hours and live in town.

“That’s the direction they need to go in,” Branche said. “Otherwise we’re looking at the end of the volunteer system as we know it in Waterford.”

l.boyle@theday.com