By Thadeus Greenson
The Times-Standard
EUREKA, Calif. — In a presentation that took the tone of a bean counter at times and a marriage counselor at others, a hired consultant told the Eureka City Council and the Humboldt Fire No. 1 Protection District Board that consolidating their fire departments makes sense.
After sitting through a 90-minute slide presentation that covered various aspects of consolidation, district Supervisor Fred Moore wanted to cut to the chase. He said he saw both challenges and opportunities in the feasibility study being presented by Citygate, the company the district and the city had hired to look into the possible merging of their storied fire departments.
But Moore wanted a more direct answer. He got it.
“If you have a scale from zero to 10, with zero being don’t do it and 10 being do it, you guys are up around a 9.5,” said Citygate General Government Principal Dwane Milnes.
But as Milnes and his colleague, Fire Practice Principal Stewart Gary, detailed for the two governing bodies and about two dozen firefighters in attendance, the path to a single department will not be easy, and will likely be a years-long process. Consolidation also isn’t likely to be a fiscal boon to either entity.
“Consolidation is not going to save you a ton of money,” Gary said. “I’m sorry, it’s just not there.”
Consolidation, however, could result in a leaner department that provides better service to its citizens and does more to limit the liability of its governing agencies, Gary said.
Citygate is recommending that the city and the district begin the consolidation process by merging the department’s headquarters staff -- a process that is already underway as the agencies currently share a fire training officer and a fire chief. Fully merging the headquarters staff will ultimately eliminate a paid position — once a fire prevention officer retires — and allow the agencies to field three battalion chiefs, who would act as incident commanders, improving the safety of fire fighters and shielding the city and district from liability, according to the consultants. It would also provide both agencies some “depth,” Gary said, adding that both departments are one long-term injury away from a major staffing issue.
“It would also improve the effectiveness of management staff because individually, they are going to do a few things, but they are going to do them better,” Gary said, adding that the current structure has management personnel acting as “Jacks of all trades.”
Merging the headquarters staff is immediately feasible, according to the study, because there is currently little overlap in positions, and the salaries and benefits of the employees who would be affected are pretty similar. When it comes to fully merging the departments and their fire fighting personnel, however, things get a bit trickier as differences in pay, benefits and retirement plans would have to be ironed out over time. The district also has almost $3 million in retiree medical unfunded liabilities, while the city has millions of dollars in unfunded CalPERS liabilities.
Perhaps the largest hurdle in consolidating the departments might be coming up with a funding agreement that will work for both agencies. If the two agencies were to enter into a joint powers agreement, they would have to decide on a formula to determine costs. Currently, Eureka pays about 67 percent of the total budget of both agencies, which pretty closely mirrors the breakdown of calls for service, as 68 percent of those made to the departments originate from within city limits. But ultimately, both the district and the city would have to agree on a funding formula that they deem fair.
“If you can’t decide how you’re going to allocate costs, you can’t get married,” Milnes said.
While there are a host of other questions such as who would service the new, consolidated department’s equipment and provide legal and personnel services to the new department — to name just a couple — the consultants advised the two agencies to immediately move forward with forming a joint powers agreement.
Gary advised the elected officials they would need to crawl, then walk, then run in this process.
“You don’t need all these questions answered at the outset,” he said, adding that the agencies could work together to hammer out the details and bring their employee compensation packages in line, paving the way for full consolidation several years down the line.
The main point, the consultants said, is that consolidation makes sense, and it would behoove the city and the district to start work immediately on a joint powers agreement. But Gary, a retired fire chief who oversaw the consolidation of the Pleasanton and Livermore departments, cautioned that these discussions need to be about people, about shared interests and relationships.
“The minute you make this about counting the last nickel, you’re adopting an attitude that will end in divorce,” he said.
At the conclusion of Tuesday’s meeting, it was decided the district and the city’s Joint Fire Services Committee would meet to discuss the presentation and forward some recommendations on to the city council and the district’s board.
Copyright 2012 Eureka Times-Standard