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Regionalization of Fire Services
I have always favored regionalization of services where it works, not just fire, but police and public works or municipalities themselves. In Pennsylvania we have many fire departments and many municipalities. I have talked about regionalization of departments in my county and ways it could possibly be accomplished effectively. The local Pennsylvania State Representative found out about this. The representative favors regionalization so he can funnel money to one or a few entities instead many. He asked me if I could present a plan to him on how to regionalize the fire departments in the area. I agreed to come up with a plan. I decided that I am going to come up with a generic plan that would work in most places, giving examples of area situations. I am going this route since there isn’t any formal planning of a county wide fire system. There are a few departments considering regionalizing or merging in the county currently.
Background on Current Fire system:
Large (size of Rhode Island) rural county population just over 100,000 people. One city of 30,000 people. There are about 60,000 people in the metropolitan area of the county.
There are 35 fire departments. One is career with approx 33 firefighters, and a manned airport fire truck during the day. Duplication of services exists in several areas, and some municipalities have more than one independent department.
Have a single dispatch center for the entire county. BLS is handled by fire departments, 2/3 of the county is covered by hospital based ALS the other half by a division of a fire department.
I think many areas in the county are in favor of some type of consolidated system because of normal issues, like lack of manpower and financial problems.
I have been trying to get input on this project from several people and sources. I want to come up with about three or four different proposals or plans on how to proceed. I like to have options out there, so people can see what alternatives are available to choose from.
One plan was to have a county wide department, managed through county government. Managed through the Department of Public Safety in a new Fire Division and funded with additional millage on the county tax.
Another plan was to start with a smaller group of departments forming under a fire commission. This plan would have in place ways for other departments to join, if or when they would want to. With this system if a municipality doesn’t want to join they don’t have to. The commission would create the budget and submit the funding requests through the municipalities. Municipalities would be charged through a percentage system, based on population and assed property value. (This was recently done to form a police department in the county to cover three municipalities. Two police departments will be dissolved and the new one formed at the end of this month. Looks promising so far, everything is going smooth.)
Another plan includes just creating larger independent fire departments consisting of several former independent stations, with funding coming from an assessed fire tax.
Looking for other methods or options.
Of course with regionalization, the main goals are cost savings, elimination of duplication of services, consistency of equipment and procedures, equal training and performance standards and adequate manpower.
I have no plans to initially say; this place needs to close or you need to sell this engine, this just doesn't work. These things may and will happen in the future, but I want to start by coming together administratively, then standardizing procedures and training.
I am welcoming any responses to this post, positive, negative, but mostly looking for suggestions, ideas, advice, experiences of what has worked for others or just questions on anything I wasn't clear on. Public or private messages are ok, I have no specific time planned currently to have the presentation complete.
Background on Current Fire system:
Large (size of Rhode Island) rural county population just over 100,000 people. One city of 30,000 people. There are about 60,000 people in the metropolitan area of the county.
There are 35 fire departments. One is career with approx 33 firefighters, and a manned airport fire truck during the day. Duplication of services exists in several areas, and some municipalities have more than one independent department.
Have a single dispatch center for the entire county. BLS is handled by fire departments, 2/3 of the county is covered by hospital based ALS the other half by a division of a fire department.
I think many areas in the county are in favor of some type of consolidated system because of normal issues, like lack of manpower and financial problems.
I have been trying to get input on this project from several people and sources. I want to come up with about three or four different proposals or plans on how to proceed. I like to have options out there, so people can see what alternatives are available to choose from.
One plan was to have a county wide department, managed through county government. Managed through the Department of Public Safety in a new Fire Division and funded with additional millage on the county tax.
Another plan was to start with a smaller group of departments forming under a fire commission. This plan would have in place ways for other departments to join, if or when they would want to. With this system if a municipality doesn’t want to join they don’t have to. The commission would create the budget and submit the funding requests through the municipalities. Municipalities would be charged through a percentage system, based on population and assed property value. (This was recently done to form a police department in the county to cover three municipalities. Two police departments will be dissolved and the new one formed at the end of this month. Looks promising so far, everything is going smooth.)
Another plan includes just creating larger independent fire departments consisting of several former independent stations, with funding coming from an assessed fire tax.
Looking for other methods or options.
Of course with regionalization, the main goals are cost savings, elimination of duplication of services, consistency of equipment and procedures, equal training and performance standards and adequate manpower.
I have no plans to initially say; this place needs to close or you need to sell this engine, this just doesn't work. These things may and will happen in the future, but I want to start by coming together administratively, then standardizing procedures and training.
I am welcoming any responses to this post, positive, negative, but mostly looking for suggestions, ideas, advice, experiences of what has worked for others or just questions on anything I wasn't clear on. Public or private messages are ok, I have no specific time planned currently to have the presentation complete.
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Comment by Jay Nicholson on December 16, 2009 at 9:18pm
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Comment by Brandon on December 16, 2009 at 3:07am
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Check out columbia Fire/rescue SC, the county and city fall under one enity. but its called Columbia Fire/Rescue. works great all under one command staff 4 battaions with about 30 depts county sves money and city saves money we all work together as one big team even though there are diff fire districts in each batt i.e. my station is under batt 4 original district is Capital View. we kept our name and such but now carry the term Columbia/Richland Fire services. Volunteer dept 1 paid engineer 24/7 have pagers and radios tones dropped we respond like any other vol dept only diff is engine rolls soon as tones dropped if we need brish truck or tanker we go to station grab it up.
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Alan, I can understand your skepticism. Consolidation must be a win-win for everyone involved.
The 3 depts. I was talking about serve about 175K people in 27.7 square miles. That's 3 fire chiefs, 3 fire marshals, at least 3 secretaries, etc. 9 engines and 2 trucks. If we add the 4th, you get 228K and 44 square miles. 2 more engines and a truck. Now 4 chiefs etc....
Another city here has a population of 228K in 51 square miles. 9 engines and 2 trucks. 1 chief, 1 fire marshal etc. Seems like the 1 is run better than the 3 separate. The 3 are geographically close with 1 sharing borders with the other 2.
Consolidation/regionalization should be about reducing duplicate services and thereby reducing costs to the taxpayers.
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Comment by Alan Shaw on December 15, 2009 at 5:40am
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Why doesn't anyone ever say we need to regionalize our public libraries? I mean we could save all that money they are just throwing away on books!
Or lets go to a County government and abolish the Municipal government as a whole. You think Fire Chiefs want to keep their "fiefdoms" try telling a Mayor or City Council that they are no longer needed under the new plan! Watch how fast you are ridden out of town on a rail.
I think that sometimes the fire service, despite it's faults, is unfairly targeted in these schemes. However there are places where it works. One that comes to mind is North Hudson Regional Fire, in New Jersey that merged 5 departments, closing at least one station in the process. I know they dealt with 5 unions, 5 contracts, 5 promotional standards, but they seem to have made it work. There are several places, most notably in Maryland and California that have large county wide fire departments. I can work, I just wonder if it needs to work.
I also question the motivation of the State Representative, who I admit that I have never met. He wants to be able to fund a smaller number of departments. I can see two downsides to this. Either he does not want to be bothered learning about all the departments and their true needs, which might require him to make decisions of which projects he supports. Possibly he only wants to deal with 1 Chief, who since he would likely be one of the existing Chiefs, might be beholden to that Representative for his remaining position.
I may be completely wrong on this, but a healthy amount of skepticism should be employed.
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Plan 2 may have the most success of even getting off the ground. On Jan 1 the command staff here for 3 depts. will merge under a JPA of the 3 cities. The hope is that eventually 1 dept. will emerge from this. The process started with 4 cities but 1 quickly pulled out. The door is closed for 2 years and then other depts. wanting to come on board may be allowed at that time. My city's chief is losing a bugle until he retires in about 18 months. The next major hurdle will be the 3 unions.
Costs were decided by population and run volume. Initial savings I think to my city is about $150K
The idea is great. Doing it is hard. There has been talk of doing this for 40 years. This recent economics is probably the only reason this was even considered this time around. Good luck and keep us up to date.
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Comment by Vic Silverfish on December 14, 2009 at 4:54am
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Good luck, mate. You will soon find you are dealing with 35 fiefdoms, none of whom will cede the slightest bit of power, each of whom will demand more resources. Prepare to be the most hated person in the county.
That said, I think this is the right thing to do. Standardising equipment, training, SOPs, allocating budget centrally, and forming a 1, 3, and 5 year plan should (in theory) provide better service for all of your citizens.
good luck! I will follow your story with a great deal of interest.
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