Richmond Hill, Markham, Vaughan fire to explore shared services

Increased efficiency is ultimate goal

Yorkregion.com
May 8, 2018
Teresa Latchford

 

Fire and emergency services in Richmond Hill, Markham and Vaughan are exploring the option of sharing services.

The Town of Richmond Hill recently approved a recommendation from its fire consolidation study council advisory committee directing town staff and the mayor to draft a memorandum of understanding between the southern three York Region municipalities pertaining to the funding of a fire and emergency services shared services feasibility study.

“We are in the very, very early stages,” Richmond Hill Fire Services Chief Steve Kraft said. “This is not about amalgamation, it’s to explore the possibilities of sharing services that would increase efficiency.”

Each municipality will take on an area to research, he added. Markham will be looking to see if an automatic aid practice would be more efficient than the current request assistance process. For example, if Richmond Hill has all of its crews and resources in use, it would call on a neighbouring municipality to cover its fire stations, but an automatic system would have the nearest crew and truck dispatched to assist immediately.

All three municipalities have their own dispatch service and there could be a possibility that one or two might be sufficient to share.

The third aspect would be focused around joint purchases and shared training opportunities between municipalities.

“This is just to see if it would make sense to explore the merits of going in depth with a study,” Kraft said. “There are no decisions being made at the moment and the answers could go either way. We are just collecting data to determine if it is worth it to move forward.”

Richmond Hill originally struck an advisory committee in 2016 and approached Central York Fire Services, which serves Newmarket and Aurora, to see if any service efficiencies would be worth looking into.

A consultant was brought on and when the detailed report came back, CYFS found there weren’t enough benefits to carry on.

When the advisory committee reported back to Richmond Hill council, it was suggested a partnership with other municipalities be explored.

If the data supports moving forward, an in-depth study would be conducted and presented to each council in the future.