Facing rising costs and potentially restricting budget constraints for next year, Fire Chief Michael Walker remains supportive of a move by selectmen to keep the budget under control.

“They’re taking on the responsibility and following what they feel is a public mandate to try and find out what’s the best efficiency for the town,” he said. “I think they’ve got a lot of guts doing it.”

While nothing is set in stone until after the voters approve the budget next March, Walker is preparing to reconcile rising expenses with a budget that does not reflect those increased costs. In the short term, it translates into more overtime and a delay in purchasing new equipment or repairing older pieces of machinery.

“The only motivation is to deliver the best possible service under the budget,” Walker said. “What I decided to do, if we were going to have a limited budget, we were going to focus that into the training and focus on delivering the best service possible.”

The tightened budget comes as Walker must allocate $92,000 extra toward contractual obligations this year. In order to keep his finances on target, he had to cut $128,000 going to equipment, supplies and manpower.

In the event one of his firefighters takes time off or is injured, Walker may have to reduce the size of his shifts from four men to three. If the station receives multiple calls at once, the firefighters on duty will be forced to choose between waiting for reinforcements to show up or fighting a fire understaffed.

Walker has also been using emergency medical supplies – stockpiled in the event of an emergency – to stock his ambulances in order to defer the rising costs of the supplies. Not all of the supplies are transferable and of those that are, there is a limited amount.

The ability to purchase new equipment – like a backup hose, which would give Walker the ability to test his equipment without taking a fire engine out of service – does not look likely in the next year.

According to Shawn Buckley, a firefighter with seven years of experience in Pelham, the situation has been getting tougher for the department over the past year and a half.

“We went a month without buying soap to wash the trucks,” he said. “We were doing really good for a while.”

Though the department currently needs a new ambulance, new gear, and repair parts for several engines, including the backup forestry unit, Buckley does not see any of it coming through any time soon.

“Every little thing seems to add up,” Walker said. “We are going to continue to give superior service. We are going to do what we have to do.”

Selectman Harold Lynde said the intent of the board had never been to drastically cut the budgets of town departments, but to try and hold the line when it came to spending. While Walker presented a bare bones estimate at their request, the selectmen plan to review each of Pelham’s departments before presenting to the Budget Committee.

“We’re going to take into account any of the cutbacks. I know we’ve run across several of those things. We’re going to add those things back in,” Lynde said. “The level of service we have provided has diminished from what it has been. We are mindful of holding the line but also of obligations to provide adequate service.”

Lynde said voters may have been reacting to higher taxes and the downturn in the economy when they voted against the operating budget in March, but he did not think Pelham’s residents had intended to slash and burn the town’s budget.

By not voting for the approval of a police contract, he said the town had lost several good police officers, some of whom had not received a raise in three years.

“I think some people just vote no to say we’re spending too much money and not thinking that they’re going to get impacted by the level of service,” he said. “I don’t think people really want to diminish this capacity, but we have.”

For his part, Walker said he is working more closely with the neighboring town of Windham to provide adequate coverage of Pelham during any emergency that might arise.