By Nassim Benchaabane
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — Seven cities across mid St. Louis County are taking the first steps to merge their fire departments into one regional force.
Officials from Olivette, University City, Clayton, Richmond Heights, Maplewood, Webster Groves and Shrewsbury have finalized an agreement to pay up to $40,000 each to study how they could merge departments into one regional agency, as early as 2028.
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“If we can go back in time and design the fire service for municipalities in the St. Louis region, no one would ever pick the way we currently do it,” Clayton City Manager David Gipson said in an interview.
Many of the cities don’t have the resources to fight major fires on their own, they say. Costs for fire trucks, ambulances and personnel keep rising faster than tax revenues can keep up. And the multiple independent agencies can make it difficult to respond to emergencies as quickly and cohesively as possible.
One regional department, backers say, would be more resourceful, flexible and efficient.
“It makes a whole lot of sense from an efficiency and operational standpoint to have one agency that has the size and ability to handle these emergencies,” Gipson said.
It’s the latest effort to consolidate some services among St. Louis County’s 87 municipalities, long criticized for their fragmentation. Some attempts have failed spectacularly, such as the 2019 plan to merge all of St. Louis and St. Louis County into one government. But cities have meanwhile cooperated in more subtle ways, pooling dollars to buy supplies, contracting services with one another and combining police departments.
Just this winter, outgoing St. Louis County Executive Sam Page called for St. Louis to “re-enter” St. Louis County and further combine services, with budget woes mounting for each government.
St. Louis County municipalities are feeling the pinch, too. In Clayton, annual increases in revenue are lagging behind rising operating expenses by as much as 4%, Gipson said.
“We have a long-term structural problem trying to pay for those services,” he said. “And that’s not unique to us.”
A dozen other cities invited to participate in the study either didn’t respond to invitations to take part or opted out, Gipson said. Some said the study was too expensive. Others said they would lose direct oversight of their fire stations, equipment and personnel.
“The overall loss of control raised red flags for Brentwood’s leadership as it could result in loss of local control over critical public safety needs,” Brentwood spokeswoman Michelle Boyer said in a written statement.
At least three previous attempts to merge city fire departments since 2001 have stalled because of disagreements between cities or with the rank and file.
Still, this is the first time city leaders and the firefighters’ union are all working together from the start, backers say.
“Just being included on the front end and having a seat at the table is a major step in the right direction,” said Andrew Pinster, a representative of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 2665 and a Webster Groves fire captain.
How it would work
The seven cities funding the study have a combined 216 employees and $36 million budget, Pinster said. The regional department would pool those resources to serve about 108,000 residents across an area from Olive Boulevard south to Watson Road.
It’s structure would be unique.
St. Louis County is currently served by 19 municipal fire departments, run by local cities, and 24 fire districts, each run by an elected board of directors and funded through property taxes approved by voters.
Nowhere in Missouri is there a regional fire department controlled by multiple city governments, Gipson said.
That entity, called a regional fire authority, wouldn’t have the ability ask voters to raise taxes, like fire districts can. Cities would pay fees to fund the new department and would have oversight of the department’s board of directors, which could be elected or appointed.
The model has worked well in other states like Washington and California, Gipson said.
“There are a number of consulting firms throughout the country that study exactly this,” Gipson said.
The seven St. Louis County cities plan to form a steering committee to oversee the coming study, with two elected officials, two IAFF representatives, two city managers, two fire chiefs and two finance directors.
The committee is expected to be seated by July and then issue bids for someone to undertake the study.
More efficient?
A regional fire department would build on collaboration already taking place, officials say.
All first responders in the region jointly respond to calls to help one another. Six cities — Clayton, Maplewood, Richmond Heights, Brentwood , Shrewsbury and Webster Groves — built and use a joint training facility, the Central Core Fire Training Center in Shrewsbury. Several cities process 911 calls through shared dispatch centers.
But most St. Louis County cities don’t have the resources and personnel to handle first-alarm fires on their own, officials say. A fire union study in 2021 found that several cities operate below a standard adopted by the National Fire Protection Agency to staff four firefighters per truck. Several cities currently have three per truck, said Pinster, the Webster captain.
And being organized by geographic boundaries doesn’t always make sense.
“There are a lot of areas in Webster that Shrewsbury can get to more quickly than we can, but we would still be the ones dispatched to the calls under the way we do things now,” Pinster said. “That is one very basic change that could come out of this — the unit best suited for that call would be dispatched.”
City officials also hope to realize cost savings.
“When it comes to our expectation of the study, that’s a big one right there,” said Shrewsbury City Manager Dustin Ziebold. The city, population 6,200, spends about $3 million annually on firefighting and emergency medical services — nearly a third of its $8.7 million budget.
A combined fire department would save administrative costs with one chief and his deputies instead of seven command groups. Cities could pool trucks, ambulances and equipment and leverage their combined purchasing power when they need more. And instead of competing with one another for firefighters, they would standardize pay and move manpower around when needed.
There’s another reason the union supports a regional fire department — bargaining power.
Instead of negotiating seven separate contracts, which has sometimes led to conflicts between firefighters unions and city administrators, the union would negotiate just one contract with the fire authority. And it would have a chance to standardize pay and benefits.
“The ability to bargain as a bigger unit opens up ideally to being as competitive as we can be in the marketplace and hopefully retain top talent in the area and offer the most competitive package available as far as competition goes,” Pinster said.
‘Didn’t make sense’
Some cities told the Post-Dispatch that they had concerns with how the study was being structured.
Glendale Mayor Mike Wilcox said officials didn’t want to pay up to $40,000 for a study. The city, population 6,000, already has a contract with its neighbor Kirkwood, which is much larger, to have Glendale’s firefighters work under Kirkwood’s chief and command. Glendale’s emergency calls are also dispatched out of Kirkwood. The partnership has been good, he said.
“It didn’t make sense for us to splinter a very good relationship to join a study with cities that we don’t have that same relationship with,” Wilcox said.
“We felt like the prudent thing given the expense was to let the bigger cities figure it out and then see if it would make sense for a city like us after the dust settles.”
In Brentwood, officials raised a number of other concerns.
The city wanted to ensure that every participating municipality would have its city administrator or manager on the steering committee, Boyer said. Brentwood firefighters receive “strong” retirement benefits, and it was unclear what the new fire authority’s pension program would be. The city already cooperates with most of the cities in mid St. Louis County, including pitching in to develop the new joint training facility in Shrewsbury.
“These partnerships allow departments to support each other during emergencies while maintaining local control and accountability,” Boyer said. “The Board believes those agreements are functioning effectively and continue to provide significant regional cooperation.”
Gipson, Clayton’s city manager, said steering committees will be open to the public, so any city interested in the work can attend.
And cities that aren’t a part of the study could request to join the new regional fire department — if the pending study actually recommends forming one.
“If the study comes back that this isn’t a viable option,” said Shrewsbury’s Ziebold, “then we’ll at least know that, too.”
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