Mercier said the facility will be crucial to an aging Harpswell Neck with a virtually empty pool of volunteers.

“There’s going to come a time when there’s not going to be firefighters available for my community,” Mercier said. “The only way I can correct that as a chief is to have a centralized location.”

Assistant Fire Chief Sean Hall, of the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department, disagreed, saying the station could disincentivize volunteerism at the town’s three independent fire departments.

“Why am I going to spend my free time when they’ve got a brand-new building with paid people in it?” Hall said of how volunteers and prospective volunteers might view the station. “I could see it actually being the death of the volunteer departments.”

The town, which works with the three independent departments to provide fire and rescue services, is considering whether to build the $6 million-plus facility on Mountain Road, near the Town Office.

The exchange was part of the Harpswell Anchor’s panel discussion about the future of fire and rescue in Harpswell. In addition to leaders of local emergency agencies, panelists included two contributors to the Anchor’s August special report, “Involuntary Response: Harpswell Fire and Rescue in Transition.”

The report and the panel focused on Harpswell’s unique fire and rescue system, which involves cooperation between independent agencies and the town, and that system’s gradual transition from all-volunteer services to a mixture of volunteers and career personnel.

Benjamin Wallace Jr., chief of both the Cundy’s Harbor Volunteer Fire Department and the Orr’s and Bailey department, said his biggest challenge is the availability of qualified volunteers.

The decline in volunteerism is not unique to Harpswell, said J. Craig Anderson, a reporter at the Anchor who contributed to the report.

A “wave of professionalization” hit larger communities from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, Anderson said.

“Now it’s the smaller communities that are still going through this prolonged period of transition,” Anderson said. “It may be a period of transition that doesn’t end.”

Hall pointed out that volunteer firefighters are subject to the same requirements as career firefighters, and some prospective volunteers can’t access the training they need.

Wallace agreed that training presents a hurdle. “People are looking for a way to make a difference in the community, and if it’s going to take you six months to get to the point where you could even go on call, that’s very discouraging,” he said.

Wallace said new regulations proposed by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration would add further strain to volunteer departments.

The panel also discussed factors behind rising ambulance response times in Harpswell.

Anchor contributor Jeffrey Good wrote about response times for the special report. Good said Harpswell’s unique geography, with 216 miles of coastline, plays a role.

“Harpswell is very different than other communities that are served by volunteer fire departments,” Good said. “It takes a long time to get from here to there.”

Good said another factor is the rising number of people aging at home, which leads to more falls and other non-life-threatening responses, when ambulances don’t respond at the same speed.

“I’m always going to say there’s always room for improvement. But like everything else, it depends,” Wallace said. If a department receives a “fall call” and only needs to help up someone who isn’t hurt, “we’re going to respond differently than if it comes in as somebody in cardiac arrest,” he said.

The three Harpswell departments share challenges. Despite different opinions about solutions, all agree that the future depends on collaboration.” None of the three departments can go on without the other two,” Wallace said. “A three-legged stool can’t stand without one of its legs.”