As the population of Chehalis is expected to nearly double to over 13,000 residents by 2045, plans for the city to annex its urban growth area (UGA) are being discussed by city and county officials along with staff from the Port of Chehalis, which owns land and leases many properties to businesses within the UGA.
The UGA includes areas south of Chehalis on both sides of Jackson Highway stretching down to the Newaukum community and even to Napavine, Lewis County Fire District 6 in Chehalis, and neighbors Lewis County Fire District 5 in Napavine.
Once the annexation occurs, the fire departments in the area could also merge.
On Thursday, March 27, Chehalis Fire Chief Adam Fulbright gave a 45-minute presentation at the regular Port of Chehalis commissioners meeting, going over proposals on how a merger between the Chehalis Fire Department with Fire District 6 would be carried out and the benefits it would have.
A merger of a municipal fire department with a county fire district is allowed by state law as long as the municipality’s population is under 300,000 people.
“Everything I talk about here is high-level view. Everything is super conservative when we get into the numbers. And we would do the same thing if this became a conversation piece with District 5 for an RFA (Regional Fire Authority) down the road, we would have the same high level view to process this,” Fulbright said.
Merging the departments can be done through different methods, but the ultimate goal of all of them is to continue providing expedient emergency responses to residents in the area.
That isn’t the only benefit, as a merger between Fire District 6 and the Chehalis Fire Department would also provide more promotion opportunities to move up the ranks for firefighters and EMTs, reducing turnover rates and encouraging them to remain instead of finding higher paying jobs at other departments.
The combination of the two fire departments’ staff would not only create more promotion opportunities, but it could lessen the burden of those responding to emergency calls, too.
“What it’s doing is it improves our accountability on large scale incidents. It provides more command presence that we currently don’t have,” Fulbright said. “Right now, if a chief officer is not available, the initial arriving engine company and that captain, he has to serve as an incident commander, manage accountability and liability for the staff, and engage as a firefighter. So it’s just a whole lot of hats to wear, and it’s a recipe for errors, mistakes and safety issues.”
Fulbright added if the fire departments weren’t merged and the Chehalis Fire Department still wanted to grow its response force, hiring five more firefighters would cost $1 million.
Should the two departments merge, their combined operating budgets will be approximately $6.3 million annually and the new fire department will have a chief, a deputy chief, four battalion chiefs, 25 full-time employee positions and a volunteer force of 30 responders.
There are different options as to how to legally merge the Chehalis Fire Department and Fire District 6 — but the main two are functional consolidation and the RFA voter method.
Fulbright advocated for the functional consolidation method — which merges departments through interlocal agreements — as it allowed for flexibility during the merger process.
“That’s what we need, especially when you have long-term history between the organizations. We need the flexibility so that we can take the time to align operational procedures and policies,” Fulbright said. “We need to align our cultural differences. There are some differences in training, staffing and things like that.”
The RFA method allows for mergers following the proposal from an RFA planning committee, which is then put on a ballot for voter approval or rejection. While he didn’t oppose the RFA method, Fulbright preferred functional consolidation for the flexibility it allowed.
Should the merger of the two departments go down the RFA road for voter approval, Fulbright said he felt confident that voters in both the city and fire district would overwhelmingly approve a merger. Only a simple majority by both voters in the city and fire district is required.
No matter the method of the merger chosen, once the departments are unified, fire and EMS levies in Chehalis will go away, and new fire and EMS levies will be up for voter approval on the next ballot for the newly merged fire department.
As for how long the merger will take, Fulbright said he anticipated it would take approximately 36 months.
“I’m working out numbers with (Fire District) 5 as well, just to kind of see what that picture looks like. I have not done one with all three of us together, cause I don’t even know if that’s an option,” Fulbright added. “We have a lot of people to bring to the table and have many, many discussions to go before we can hopefully get to a point where we have an agreement to enter into a functional consolidation.”
