SOCORRO, Texas — A Texas city’s efforts to take over the area’s volunteer fire department and convert it to a full-time paid department is causing a heated debate. And it is not the city’s first attempt.
“This is not the same half-baked plan that previous administrations have done nothing about in the previous years,” Socorro spokesman David Garcia told KFOX. “This is a brand new effort to bring better services to Socorro.”
But El Paso County leaders who run the station in Socorro disagree, saying that it would put the city millions of dollars in debt.
“It’s a very expensive task to take over the fire department,” El Paso County Emergency Services District 2 president Carlos Sandoval told KFOX. “My personal opinion is I don’t believe that they would be more efficient than we are currently.”
Sandoval wants the city to consider other solutions, such as simply funding its own department of paid firefighters.
In addition, ESD is already working on making improvements to the volunteer station, including a new dispatch system, and looking into hiring a lawyer who specializes in emergency service districts.
“Volunteer fire departments have been working great in Texas for years,” Sandoval said. “I can only think of two departments that have been taken over but they were a lot smaller than Socorro’s.”