TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. — About 20,000 people who live in Tippecanoe County may get their full-time firefighters back.
Angel Valentin, Wabash Township's interim trustee, told 13News he and board members are working to bring back the three firefighters whose positions were eliminated over the summer by former trustee Jennifer Teising.
"We don't know exactly what the timeline will be for that, but we will be bringing them back." Valentin said, "We made that commitment from day one."
Valentin replaced Teising, who was found guilty in a bench trial on multiple counts of theft. Prosecutors claim she was living outside the township while continuing to collect a trustee paycheck.
The verdict means she can't hold the office anymore.
Reached by phone, Teising said she had no comment on the criminal case against her until her sentencing hearing is completed.
But she had plenty to say about the dispute over funding for firefighters.
"I wanted to sit down and have a conversation about how to sustain them," said Teising, who claimed board members wouldn't work with her.
When neither side could come to terms, Teising said she terminated the full-time firefighters, adding the township was operating in the red when she first took office.
That's not the way township board member David Tate described the situation last summer.
"We've got the money. It's not a question of finances," Tate told 13News in June. "It's a simple power play — a wrong power play — and we're all caught in the middle."
Fire crews warned a part-time or volunteer department would double response times for people in crisis.
Valentin says the Wabash Township Fire Department took about 1,200 calls last year and has seen a tenfold increase in the last three decades.
"We simply cannot do that with volunteers alone," Valentin said. "It's harder for volunteers to come out of their workplace for four or five runs a day, which is the average of what we're seeing right now."