In April of this year, Central Fire District (which includes Aptos and Live Oak), Scotts Valley Fire Protection District (which includes Branciforte), Santa Cruz City Fire Department and Santa Cruz County LAFCO were talking about a memorandum of understanding to study possible consolidation strategies.
On May 8, after concerns were raised, Central Fire district’s board decided the timing was not right.
Times Publishing Group Inc. asked Central Fire Chief Jason Nee to explain the situation. Here is his response:
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The MOU was designed to begin the process of selecting a vendor to execute a study on the potential options for shared services between Santa Cruz City Fire, Scotts Valley, and Central Fire.
There is an associated cost of hiring a third party, private firm to conduct the study.
Jason Nee
Historically, the focus of such a study provides a snapshot in time of each participating agency, future projections in terms of population increase, incident volume changes and budget changes.
Based on this information, there will be recommendations that would likely range from small to large opportunities that could be shared.
A non-complete list of potential areas for consideration could be: Administrative cooperation up to and including consolidation, operational cooperation up to and including consolidation, logistical cooperation up to and including consolidation, fire prevention or community risk reduction cooperation up to and including consolidation, financial cooperation up to and including consolidation, purchasing cooperation up to and including consolidation, IT cooperation up to and including consolidation.
As you can see, there are many potential opportunities to share efforts. That would be the goal of the study, to highlight those opportunities and then it would be up to the elected bodies of those agencies to take any action on any number of opportunities, or not to act.
In 2018, Central Fire and Aptos/La Selva completed a similar study (available to view on the district website) to highlight the areas where Central and Aptos could work together.
At that time, the elected bodies decided to ultimately execute a full organizational consolidation, but that was not the only option then, nor would it be today.
The agencies involved have the autonomy to select what if any cooperative opportunities they want to participate in.
It is common for people to jump to the conclusion that full-fledged organizational consolidation is the next step. This is not the case, due to the complexity of each situation.
In the Central and Aptos consolidation efforts, it was transitioned over time and only finalized in 2021.
Staff had been working to provide an MOU between Santa Cruz City, Scotts Valley Fire Protection District, Santa Cruz County LAFCO and Central Fire to conduct a study.
Central Fire’s board did not take any action on the MOU, and thus did not sign on as a participant to the MOU.
It is unclear what if any next steps are.
Central Fire will continue to evaluate opportunities to work with our partners to continue to provide an excellent level of service for the community.
We will participate in shared opportunities when they make sense for the community and for the strength of the organization.
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Here’s the link to the Central Fire board meeting on May 8 to hear what they said about the matter: www.centralfiresc.org/DocumentCenter/View/4638/05082025-Board-Meeting-Recording-MP4
