By LARRY PARSONS
Monterey County Herald (California)
The long courtship is over. Now the cities of Marina and Seaside will try to make a proposed marriage of their two fire departments work.
They will try to devise a power-sharing governing structure for the merged fire departments under a framework unanimously approved Tuesday by the Marina City Council. The Seaside City Council agreed last week to move ahead on the proposed merger.
Two consultant studies concluded Seaside and Marina could get better fire service and spend less if they combined the departments, especially with a new joint station in the Fort Ord redevelopment area.
Two council members from each city, along with their fire chiefs and city managers, will hammer out details of a proposed “joint powers authority” to oversee the merged fire departments. Both councils would have to approve the ultimate proposal.
Marina council members praised the proposed merger as a great deal for both cities, taxpayers and residents.
“In many other jurisdictions, this would have been a nonstarter,” Councilman Ken Gray said, “because people are out to build their own empires.”
“It gets us where we need to go -- faster and cheaper,” Councilman Gary Wilmot said, alluding to advantages of the merger laid out by two consultants with the Sacramento area firm of Citygate Associates.
Mayor Ila Mettee-McCutchon said consolidation of services has been talked about for years on the Monterey Peninsula.
“Now Seaside and Marina have the chance to demonstrate how it can be done efficiently,” the mayor said.
A new study by Citygate Associates said that, ideally, both cities should have two fire stations each and share a fifth station in the Fort Ord reuse area.
But adequate coverage can be better provided by combining Seaside and Marina’s firefighting resources and building a third station together on the south end of the Fort Ord reuse area, the study said.
“Neither city is big enough to afford a typical full-service fire department,” Citygate consultant Stewart Gray said.
Combining the two departments would improve service without each city incurring sky-high costs, the consultants said. By merging:
Seaside could save $565,000 a year, avoid building a second fire station by itself, lower headquarters costs and get dedicated fire marshal and fire-prevention services.
Marina could save $356,000 a year, get a second fire station and have around-the-clock battalion chief coverage.
Marina would have to spend an additional $500,000 a year to raise pay and benefits for its firefighters to the level of Seaside firefighters, the study said.
Firefighters in Seaside receive salary and benefits of $8,500 a month compared with $7,614 in Marina, the study said.
The pay equalization could be phased in over time, said Duane Milnes of Citygate.
The study suggests the cities could share costs based on population and calls for service. That would make Seaside responsible for 65 percent of the costs with Marina chipping in 35 percent, according to current figures. Both cities would retain ownership of firefighting equipment and fire stations.
The cost-sharing formula likely would change as the cities grow. With three major Fort Ord redevelopment projects and another major development in the works, Marina may become the county’s second-largest city after Salinas.
“There is no real magic formula,” Milnes said. “As communities grow and change those numbers are going to change.”
Marina is in the process of splitting its public safety department into separate police and fire departments. Councilman Michael Morrison hailed the proposed merger as another step toward that division.
“You have made my dreams come true,” he told Marina and Seaside Fire Chiefs Harald Kelley and Gerard Wombacher. “It’s going to be a great thing for our two cities.”