Buried amid all the COVID-19 news last week was an intriguing decision by the Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury and the Town of Innisfil.
With the retirement of Bradford fire chief Kevin Gallant after 30 years of service, the two towns decided to collaborate by appointing Innisfil Fire Chief Tom Raeburn as interim head of the Bradford fire department as well.
Chief Raeburn’s interim role as joint chief of the two fire services comes with a mandate “to see if shared fire services could benefit both communities.”
“Going forward we will have the advantage of pooling more of our resources together with the common goal of delivering an even better service to residents of Bradford West Gwillimbury and Innisfil,” said Chief Raeburn in a news release.
“Already, our two fire services work very closely together and jointly respond to a wide variety of calls, so this really makes sense.”
Fire chiefs are paid roughly $155,000 per year, according to the province’s Sunshine List, so at a minimum this interim joint role represents significant savings to the town’s staffing budgets as municipalities face a cash crunch due to the pandemic.
But more broadly, the idea of exploring a joint fire service is intriguing and really worth considering; we already have a joint police service and water services.
It also raises the question of what other joint services the two municipalities could pursue, to varying and lesser degrees.
Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin called the decision an “opportunity to share and collaborate with our neighbours” and BWG Mayor Rob Keffer called the move “a win-win as this is a tremendous opportunity to work more closely with our neighbours to deliver a better service while providing better value to our taxpayers.”
I spoke with Mayor Keffer last week and he was quick to credit BWG town manager Geoff McKnight who “had the vision and worked hard to bring this to fruition.”
The mayor also spoke about the interim chief’s “mandate to review the operations of each service and see if a shared fire service would benefit both communities… If opportunities arise, we will continue to work together for efficient service delivery.”
Mayor Keffer also cited the fact “the province challenged municipalities to find efficiencies—and this is a pretty big one.”
He’s right on that.
