Everett Awaits Fire Department Study

Editor’s Update Thursday Aug 20th 12:45pm: The Draft report has now been released to the city. It is 216 pages long and again in draft form. It does not yet include short or long term recommendations.

In September of last year the Everett City Council authorized spending $66,400.00 to review the operations of the Everett Fire Department. The contract was awarded to Fitch and Associates, LLC. You can see the contract and the scope of what the study was to cover here.

Last week the Everett City Council received a briefing from Fitch and Associates in the form of a power point presentation. Fitch did not present their actual report. Councilmember Brenda Stonecipher asked for a copy of the report and the Mayor asked Fitch to provide it.

Everett Fire Chief Murray Gordon made a formal request for the report and asked that it be delivered by tonight’s city council meeting. That has not happened and during tonight’s city council meeting Mayor Stephanson said the report is expected to be here by Friday.

As part of their power point presentation last week the representatives of Fitch offered three options they say could save the City of Everett anywhere from 2 to 7 million dollars. All three options included closing fire stations 4 and 5. They also suggested relocating poorly designed and out of date stations to areas more central to the majority of calls.

Other options included contracting out basic life support calls and using more medics than firefighters during peak times.

Fitch representatives advised the council they look at things differently than other consultants and that it was up to the city to decide its level of risk versus cost savings. The reports were to be delivered in three phases…

Phase I: A preliminary analysis of of Fire Department Operations and Management and Identification of Short and Long Term Opportunities.

Phase II: Evaluation of Short Term Opportunities

Phase III: Comprehensive Analysis of Fire Department Operations and Management and Comprehensive Long Term Opportunity Analysis

Neither the city council or the fire department has seen the reports but last week’s presentation has already prompted the following responses…

The Firefighters Union Local 46 today went on their Facebook page and asked members of the public to write directly to all of the Everett City Council members and urge them not to close any fire stations at all.

Everett Fire Chief Murray Gordon told MyEverettNews.com: “The devil will be in the details and right now there are no details.”

Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson told MyEverettNews.com: “It’s way, way, way too early to make any judgement and we will take whatever time necessary to do the right thing. All of this depends on negotiations with the Union.”

So for now all parties involved will wait for the actual report to come out, study it and see where to go next.