There’s no merger, no agreement on consolidating imminent, but some top-level staff of Snohomish County Fire Districts 1 and 7 are already working together.
Their task: Come up with a chart showing the structure of what a joint department would look like, with longtime District 7 chief Rick Eastman at the top running the show.
That was the edict handed down at the end of a joint meeting of the boards of commissioners of the two districts, which met Tuesday, March 9 at District 7’s headquarters in Clearview.
The move is the first step toward what could eventually become one fire district serving a wide swath of South Snohomish County, one that would go from Puget Sound east to the Snohomish River, and serve approximately a third of the county’s population, including Brier, Mill Creek and Mountlake Terrace, with a majority of the population residing in unincorporated areas.
While a consolidation can be done between the boards of fire commissioners, any full merger between the two departments would require voter approval in both districts.
Coming up with a joint department structure was the idea of District 7 commissioner Neil Doherty, who said he needed to see how a merged department would look before he could decide whether or not to proceed with a possible merger.
“I have to see how we’re going to bring together training and operations before I can approve going forward on a contract,” Doherty said. “I want to know about coverage, on operational philosophies, about policies toward medics and which stations might get eliminated.”
The decision to go ahead with a joint study of a merged district marked a meeting that at times featured strong stances that both sides referred to as “deal breakers.”
For District 7’s commissioners, a “deal breaker” would’ve been a merged district that wouldn’t include its longtime chief, Rick Eastman, heading the merged department. But District 1 commissioner Chuck Graham said a majority of that five-person board would favor keeping Eastman.
District 1 commissioner Larry Hadland, meanwhile, insisted the heads of the International Association of Fire Fighters union be in on the organization study. Without union involvement, Hadland said that would be a “deal breaker” for him.
In lieu of that, the two districts agreed that if both boards want to continue after seeing a proposed joint district organizational chart, that they would begin on a short-term transitional consolidation contract. Under one of those, the two districts would be headed by one chief, have a consolidated fire board, and have numerous cooperative functions during the length of the contract. Such a contract was in place between Fire Districts 1 and 11 before those two departments merged.
No timeline for a contract was specified, but informally, both parties mentioned a five-year contract would be a better scenario to see if a merger could work.
Both commissions will appoint two members each to serve on a joint committee that would oversee the consolidation study. Those appointments will be made by each district at their next regular board meeting, which for District 7 took place on Thursday, after The Enterprise went to press. District 1 meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 16 at the Mariner fire station, 12310 Meridian Ave. in south Everett.
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