WESTLOCK — The Village of Clyde and Westlock County are moving forward with negotiations that could see the county take over the village fire hall in exchange for 20 per cent of the operating costs.
County councillors saw a copy of the report done by Transitional Solutions Inc. at a governance and priorities meeting Oct. 20. This is part of a long series of studies TSI has been doing on fire and emergency between the two municipalities.
“So what will happen is that we will likely operate it, if we take it over, based on the same costs and expenses associated with other fire halls … so it would be a negotiated amount based on a budget, and then Clyde would refund us 20 per cent of that and so we would provide fire services to the Village of Clyde through that fee for service basis,” interim CAO Rick McDonald told the News Oct. 22.
Negotiations won’t wrap up until January 2021, he said. Since there is a pre-existing relationship between the two departments outside of policy structures — although new bylaws were passed recently that formalized the relationship — adopting a fee for service model would clear up some of the muddled operational areas.
Clyde has between 12 and 15 members, most of whom live in the county and are part of fire response teams in both jurisdictions. Colloquially, Clyde is referred to as rural Station 4 and it could cover the eastern part of the county under the new operational model. TSI looked at the ownership structure of equipment, the fire hall and training costs at the Clyde fire department and found it inadequate.
Three different parties contribute funds: the county, the village and the Clyde Fire Association.
Both the county and the village have budgets for the Clyde department but “it is unclear how the areas of budget responsibility are planned or shared.” The association was set up in the 1980s and assists in purchasing equipment, including a mini-engine/rapid response unit truck, mainly via fundraising.
In a separate report on Clyde alone in January, TSI found “urgent concerns and gaps in service” most of which have to do with recruitment, equipment, and ability to independently respond to calls. This new model could alleviate these as well.
Since 2010, Clyde firefighters couldn’t respond to 29 per cent of the calls that came in, and the county stepped in. This, TSI says, is because of staffing issues. However, the relationship between the two departments is very functional at a grassroots level, TSI wrote then. Clyde firefighters train with the county, but they suggested then that this needs to be formalized.
The numbers
In total, according to TSI, the two munis budgeted $80,853 for the Clyde fire hall: $45,279 at the county and $35,574 in the village budget.
Moving into 2021, however, and assuming an 80/20 split on fire costs, TSI recommends they spend $161,396. To deputy reeve Brian Coleman, this didn’t make sense at the GPC meeting.
On Thursday, reeve Lou Hall said these numbers could cause “confusion” since council hasn’t accepted them, they’re just numbers in a report, and they ultimately could come out with different figures.
“I think it’s a bit premature to be talking numbers. That was a report that was presented, and we’ve already said that those numbers don’t agree with other numbers that we have,” said Hall, preempting a question about which numbers the county doesn’t agree with exactly.
McDonald said that in the initial conversation with village CAO Ron Cust, they ignored the numbers.
“We both don’t have supporting information for them. And so we said ‘OK, we accept that for information’ and it can help us to sort of guide our discussions, but the reality will be ‘What does it really cost and what are we going to share in?’ And I think that’s the message that we both came back with.”
McDonald added that they’ll be looking at running Clyde with a similar cost basis as the other county departments — according to TSI, the county spends between $32,000 and $88,000 operating the other hamlet departments.
