The City of Gainesville and Alachua County need to decide soon how fire departments will respond to calls in the future.
The current Fire Service Assistance Agreement, which will expire June 1, allows the closest fire station, whether it be city- or county-operated, to respond to 911 calls. If the call falls outside of the station’s jurisdiction, the other party reimburses it.
The county and city have had various agreements about sharing fire service resources since the 1970s, but the FSAA specifically was adopted in 2006, said Gainesville Fire Rescue Chief Jeff Lane.
City Commissioner David Arreola said if fire units stop responding to calls outside their jurisdiction, response times could be slower in some areas. City and county officials met Thursday to discuss possible solutions to problems that could occur if the agreement ends.
“Everything that I see is less than perfect and results in either risking response times being lowered or not compensating our firefighters and EMTs, both of which are unacceptable,” he said.
Under the agreement, Gainesville covers an average of 30 percent of Alachua County’s 911 calls annually, while the county responds to an average of 4 percent of the city’s calls annually, Arreola said.
With the expiration looming, the city is considering creating a separate dispatch system to prevent fire stations from receiving calls that fall outside of their jurisdiction. Currently, the county and city fire services use a joint dispatch system through the Combined Communications Center.
County Commissioner Ken Cornell said separating the systems would be awful.
He said the county moved to cancel the agreement because the distribution of fire services isn’t equal. By canceling it, the county hoped to redraw the service boundaries to make the agreement mutually beneficial.
“We’re very motivated to meet with the city and work through this issue to make sure that it’s fair for both the city and the county fire departments,” he said.
The county also sent letters to the city proposing discussions about combining the two fire service departments, Cornell said.
Arreola said he thinks merging the two isn’t practical because it will be expensive to create one fire service department that can respond effectively to both rural and urban areas.
“I don’t support it,” he said. “That idea is not going to work.”
Contact Jessica Giles at jgiles@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter at @jessica_giles_.
In February 2017, a group of new hires practices getting its fire gear in under one minute to simulate an emergency situation.
