(Tom Daly) – Like Don Quixote pursuing the impossible dream, Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve has, once again, suggested a consolidated fire department for Washoe County may be coming.
She hinted at same in a joint meeting she requested of Reno, Sparks, Washoe County and Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District (TMFPD) electeds on February 6th.
Ironically, Washoe County’s other fire district, the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District (NLTFPD), was not in attendance. Snubbed?
In her opening comments Mayor Schieve mentioned both the importance of reliable water and power distribution systems, when wildfires impact both. Yet, no representative of either TMWA or NV Energy was on the dais nor made a presentation.
State Sen. Skip Daly (S-13) announced he had introduced a bill draft request (BDR) to provide a framework for needed legislation, should the local governing agencies move in the direction of consolidation, but no details were revealed as to how taxation, governance, operations, debt service or collective bargaining agreements might work.
Similar Reno consolidation proposals in 2015 and 2016 were rejected by our Washoe County Commissioners when they would have resulted in closing three TMFPD stations in the suburbs, while maintaining the featherbedding staffing and leadership model of the Reno Fire Department (RFD).
Several expert studies over the 2014-2022 period have, almost uniformly, made two, yet unfulfilled, recommendations that would improve service delivery to citizens by area fire service organizations.
The first was ‘fix dispatch’.
There are four dispatch agencies for fires in Washoe County. Those are operated by Reno, Sparks, REMSA (for the TMFPD) and Grass Valley (CA) for the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District (NLTFPD).
The 2017 IXP study estimated a single consolidated dispatch agency would save taxpayers of involved jurisdictions $991K per year in operating costs. The current project to have all of those agencies operate with the same dispatch software has yet to become operational.
Even if successful, those jurisdictions would continue to maintain separate, expensive and redundant dispatch operations with no obligation to dispatch the closest units to a fire regardless of the fire’s location.
Reno, from 2017 thru October 2024, routinely refused to dispatch TMFPD units into the city when those TMFPD units are closer than RFD’s units.
The related second recommendation is to employ unrestricted automatic aid, with the closest units (plural) responding to emergencies regardless of the incident’s jurisdiction.
When the Nevada legislature in 2015 mandated automatic aid for fire for all Washoe County fire agencies, Schieve, her city manager and fire chief all opposed the legislation, SB-185.
While that legislation was enacted, it unfortunately ‘sunsetted’ in 2017.
Note that Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas have operated with a single consolidated fire dispatch agency and with unrestricted automatic aid successfully for more than three decades, while each fire department there remains autonomous.
The realities are the TMFPD and NLTFPD have dedicated property tax authority to fund their operations while Reno Fire must compete with other city departments for needed resources.
Despite a $3 million per year overtime budget, RFD routinely closes (‘browns out’) stations or units therein, almost daily. Schieve’s proposal is a thinly disguised effort to seize those dedicated fire tax district tax revenues to heal the RFD’s cancerous operations.
The two disastrous Caughlin Ranch wildfires destroyed or damaged more than 70 homes in Reno.
The subsequent 2019 recommendations by the City’s expert, the Center for Public Safety Management (CPSM) for its fire department have largely been ignored, with little reform of RFD’s operations or replacement of its inept leadership.
So, why should the Washoe County Commissioners follow recommendations of a failed leader like Mayor Schieve?
The Reno Mayor and City Council should clean up their own (fire) houses before attempting to destroy the well managed TMFPD and NLTFPD, whose citizens and taxpayers want no part of Reno’s problems.
Mr. Daly is a resident of Washoe County served by the TMFPD. The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views.
