County services advised to unify

A consultant urges countywide merging of fire and emergency.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer
Published January 6, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - The fire chiefs of Hernando County know the drill when it comes to discussion of unifying fire and emergency services.

They have weathered the consolidations that have come before and survived the battles to consolidate further.

So when the long-awaited "Regional Emergency Services Master Plan and Cooperative Services Feasibility Study" was released last week, they were girding themselves for the next onslaught.

The Oregon-based consultant concluded that it was feasible for all six departments providing fire and emergency medical services in Hernando County to unify into one agency, or for the two largest providers - Hernando County Fire Rescue and Spring Hill Fire Rescue - to unify.

Either route would save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, eliminating redundancy in administration, support services, planning and other areas.

The unification issue is one likely to hang in limbo for most of 2008, pending the outcome of the planned November referendum in which Spring Hill residents will be asked whether they want their fire rescue district to be independent from Hernando County.

Even the consultant recognizes that political support for total unification "remains questionable at best."

But the report also lists another way to accomplish some of the same goals.

While the various independent fire departments have always shared equipment, personnel and expertise, the consultant encourages more than two dozen other ways to share, cooperate and work together to create more cohesive and uniform emergency services across Hernando County.

The county's fire service leaders say that some of the recommendations surprise them, urging them to cooperate in ways they already do to various degrees. Other suggestions, they say, may sound good on paper but don't allow for differences in the details of the communities they serve or the cultures of their own departments.

Some, they acknowledge, merit further exploration.

All that is expected to become the grist of political discussions in the months ahead.

"We should keep an open mind and pick and choose the decisions that make the most sense," said Hernando County Fire Rescue Chief Mike Nickerson. "It's going to come down to a decision by the Board of County Commissioners, Brooksville City Council and the Spring Hill Fire Commission."

Merger challenges

The emergency services consultant, paid $128,351 for the 574-page report, says that, "short of creating a single-service provider, we believe that program-level collaboration offers the best prospect for the county fire and EMS departments."

Nickerson knows about trying to bring various departments together to collaborate and standardize. He faced many such challenges when, in 2000, the old Northwest, Northeast, East Hernando and Airport fire districts consolidated. The new district also took over the private ambulance service known as Florida Regional Emergency Medical Service.

Then, in 2003, Hernando County Fire Rescue also took over coverage of what is known as Township 22, an area that had been served by the Brooksville Fire Department.

When three different protocols had to be combined in 2000, he said, the promise was to keep up the same level of service. "You don't all agree, but there doesn't necessarily have to be a loser," Nickerson said.

But the fire chiefs of the two other large, paid emergency departments say that isn't necessarily so. "There will always be a winner. There will always be a loser," said Tim Mossgrove, Brooksville fire chief.

Chief J.J. Morrison of Spring Hill Fire Rescue called it "give and take."

For example, who would be fire chief? Whose ambulance fees would be adopted? Whose pay scale would stand?

That's why the cooperation strategies short of unification are labeled as the more short- and medium-term goals in the consultant's report. They recommend standardizing operating guidelines, something that could be done more quickly.

Nickerson said that there have to be different guidelines when there are different departments. Hernando County Fire Rescue, for example, has guidelines concerning how firefighters can move from one station assignment to another. That kind of guideline isn't needed in Brooksville, where the Fire Department has just one station.

Mossgrove said that most of what he has seen in other department guidelines "looks a whole lot like the book I took mine from." He said the standard is the National Incident Management System. "You can't even get a grant if you're not NIMS-compliant," he said.

Morrison also said he thought the local departments already had standard guidelines used by the Pasco Hernando Fire Chiefs organization.

"It's so we're all singing off the same hymnal," he said.

Another idea suggested by the consultants is that the agencies create shared specialty teams, such as dive, hazardous materials and rescue teams.

The chiefs of the three largest fire departments say they have already done that where needed. Hazardous materials team members are on every shift in Spring Hill, Hernando and Brooksville, and they respond to their own or their neighbors' incidents as needed.

Spring Hill also has an urban search and rescue team, which it shares. Morrison said he could see some value in training Brooksville or Hernando Fire Rescue personnel to participate in that. The county had a dive team in the past, but it was disbanded because the low number of calls, Nickerson said.

A consultant suggestion to create a joint support and logistics division is already largely met in spirit because both Spring Hill and Hernando Fire Rescue make their supply purchases through the county, and Brooksville does some of that as well, the chiefs said.

Another suggestion is that the agencies establish a fire investigation team, working with law enforcement and the state attorney.

Mossgrove said that he is a fire investigator and works with the investigator from Hernando County. Whenever any of the fire departments need help in an investigation, they bring in the state fire marshal.

"We might be big enough to go to a countywide team," Morrison said.

Training is an area where the consultant had several suggestions to create better partnerships. Common training standards, a county training manual, an annual training plan and even constructing a common fire and EMS training facility are recommended.

There is some joint training in the departments, but "not a whole lot," Nickerson said.

As for a new training facility, he said that has been proposed to the County Commission before and shelved until the master plan was completed. Both Mossgrove and Morrison said that such a venture would be expensive, as fire officials in Pasco County have discovered.

Morrison said his department looks forward to using the new Pasco facility. The problem with a centrally located training site in Hernando is that Spring Hill personnel would be far from their service area while training or would have to be brought in on overtime.

Historical differences

As for cost, Nickerson pointed out that many of the suggestions hinge on funding, which is always in question. Mossgrove and Morrison said that is even more of a concern with a tax reform referendum looming for voters this month.

Suggestions to form an educational coalition for fire safety education had several of the chiefs scratching their heads because programs are already in place for schools and the community. "Could it be improved? It always can," Nickerson said.

Other areas of partnership are likely to get considerably more discussion in the months ahead because they are controversial, including consolidating Spring Hill into the county's dispatching system, unifying fees among all the departments and creating a model employee contract for firefighters countywide.

Even the seemingly simple suggestion of making uniform purchases of equipment points out the differences among departments. Mossgrove said heavier and taller trucks used by the other departments won't work in Brooksville, where brick streets cannot handle the weight and where heritage oaks must be protected.

In Spring Hill, which boasts 50 percent of the county's population and only 10 percent of the territory to be protected, the types of trucks could be different from what Hernando County needs in its sprawling area, Morrison said.

"We're fighting two different animals," he said.

In Morrison's mind, the question becomes: "Do you dilute what Spring Hill has a bit to bring up the rest of the county?"

That is why the consolidation issue is so difficult.

"You could do that if everyone wanted to go to the table with the same goal in common - public safety countywide - and you took all the personalities out of it. But I don't think that can happen," Mossgrove said.

For Brooksville's part, he said, "We don't want to lose our identity. For us it's history, and we don't want to lose our history."

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at behrendt@sptimes.com or (352) 848-1434.

FAST FACTS:

See for yourself

To view the master plan and feasibility study, visit hernando.tampabay.com.

To view the master plan and feasibility study go to: http://www.clerk.co.hernando.fl.us/Other/AuditServices.html#reports

[Last modified January 5, 2008, 20:02:32]