The Chicago Tribune has an article about a study to investigate a consolidation of fire and EMS services of the Highwood, Highland Park, Lake Forest, and Lake Bluff fire departments.
Lake Forest, Highland Park, Lake Bluff and Highwood are expected to form a task force in early 2013 to study ways to save money through collaboration — including the consolidation of fire protection and emergency medical services for their 60,000 residents.
Going with the national trend of consolidation could save the four communities between $1 million and $1.8 million annually, according to a study by the International City/County Management Association.
Lake Forest dispatches its own fire/EMS and police, and on contract dispatches Lake Bluff’s 100-year old volunteer fire department, as well as providing ambulance service to Lake Bluff.
Highwood contracts with Lake Forest for police dispatch and goes through Regional Emergency Dispatch (RED) in Northbrook for fire/EMS. Highland Park, with nearly 2,000 fire/EMS calls annually, dispatches all of its public safety calls.
Another option would be to contract with an existing universal dispatch center, such as Northbrook’s Regional Emergency Dispatch, and a third option would be housing dispatch for fire, EMS and police under one roof, Irvin said.
Leonard Matarese, director of research and project development at the ICMA Center for Public Safety Management, analyzed the four jurisdictions’ fire and EMS needs.
“The longtime premise nationally has been to have same level staffing, 24/7, for fire and EMS, but the realization over the last five years (globally) is that workloads and service demands have peaks and valleys,” he said. “Analyzing services workloads and calls convinced fire prevention officials in England over a decade ago to allocate staff based on time of day and days of the week. Typically, fires and EMS calls occur during the day and slow down by 9 or 10 at night.”
The ICMA study suggests there are three alternatives related to firefighting and emergency medical services:
“Functional consolidation,” which involves cooperation across jurisdictions for a common service, but the four departments remain separate entities.
“Operational consolidation” maintains a legal separation, but the four departments join operations and administration to function as a single agency.
“Full consolidation” merges four fire departments into a single entity, in which jurisdictional boundaries “become invisible” and all service demands become single functions of the department.
The ICMA projects the functional and operational alternatives could save members between $950,000 and $1.5 million annually; with full consolidation savings between $1.4 million and $1.95 million.
“It’s typically political, financial, labor contracts and retirement systems that are major issues,” said Matarese. “But these four cities are already at a certain level of sharing, cooperation and functional consolidation. Also, they do some joint purchasing and standardizing of equipment.”
The entire article can be viewed HERE.
#1 by jack on December 21, 2012 - 7:41 PM
It’s time that the changes happen. Highland Park runs 2 men engs and a truck that just sits. Lake Bluff is a vollie. Lake Forest also runs 2 man engines and the tower is a jump comp. And Highwood can only runs 2 on the truck. The chiefs and village managers need to get their head out of their ass and relize what is good for the city and let this happen.
#2 by Mez Yonk on December 19, 2012 - 6:47 PM
Municipalities love THE IDEA of saving money, but no one wants to give up the control of their fire department. I’m not talking about chiefs not wanting to give up their kingdom, I’m talking about mayors, managers, trustees, and alderman wanting to keep control over fire departments for political agendas. Politicians love telling chiefs that the men need to show up at a block party or the grand opening of a new business. Tough to order guys around after you give up that control.
#3 by Tom on December 19, 2012 - 4:07 PM
I think you will be seeing a lot more of this in the near future. With all the auto and mutual aid that occurs, these departments are already consolidated. Of course there will be savings. You will not need all the Chiefs and Deputy Chiefs.
#4 by Expat on December 19, 2012 - 12:40 PM
I don’t see the savings as being that great, especially for these towns. How much are they spending on this study? They are always analyzing stuff up there that really doesn’t need it. They have tons of money, yet they spend a ton of money to theorize for something that would have little savings…it seems like they do it just to look like they are trying to save money. And of course, the fire departments are always in the crosshairs.
Besides, they all have very proud, old departments. Heck, they keep their rigs running good, still with 89 / 91 year models and running strong. Not able to buy one every 6 years like some towns. Seeing them all dissolved into one would be kind of sad. I will admit that the dispatching up there is a little confusing though.
Also, no Knollwood in this mix?