Richmond Heights City Manager Amy Hamilton reviewed at the city council meeting on Monday what the updated joint fire command looks like now with Rock Hill and Clayton having dropped out.
Rock Hill opted out for financial reasons: it would have cost the city about $100,000 to buy in to the program. Clayton’s fire chief retired in October 2017 so that city’s command situation is in flux.
According to Hamilton, Richmond Heights is the only one of that city, Brentwood and Maplewood that would come out in the positive in the plan.
She said Richmond Heights would save about $34,000 in the collaboration but Brentwood and Maplewood would pay more for fire services costs.
Brentwood would pay $96,000 more for the collaborative and Maplewood would have a $158,000 increase.
See the documents: ECFC new financial 1.2018, ECFC job summaries 1.2018
She said the reason is that Richmond Heights now pays salaries for its three battalion chiefs, chief and administrative assistant. The cost sharing formula takes the salary of those positions today and compares it to the cost sharing formula.
She said everyone would keep their benefits at their home locations.
Richmond Heights Mayor Jim Thomson said he would reach out to the Brentwood and Maplewood mayors to get their thoughts on the plan before Richmond Heights goes any farther on it.
See also: Joint fire command to include Brentwood, Maplewood, Richmond Heights
The council also approved conditional permits for Vitality Bowls and Red Robin at The Crossings at Richmond Heights and a liquor license for Texas de Brazil, a restaurant coming to the Galleria.
Maybe if it was not “joint”, there would be less confusion (trying to convince the dispatcher) regarding the address being in Maplewood, not the City!
I like the idea of being able to call My firehouse. They know where I live. Not like the central police department. Our police station knows where we live when I call them.
Hoping someone more knowledgeable about this can comment on the initial and long term costs associated in some kind of apples to apples comparison for Maplewood. At the moment this is sounding like a very bad deal.
Those are initial costs. What are long term costs once unneccessary positions and systems are reduced?
Seems like the “reasons” for this joint command are evaporating quickly for maplewood.
Yea I always thought that the point was to cut back on redundancy across the municipalities. I just don’t understand how combining the fire command costs $100,000+.