By GARRET JAROS / Lincoln Chronicle
YACHATS – Just two meetings into discussing a possible merger or consolidation of the Yachats and Waldport-area fire districts some board members and one chief are chomping at the bit to get started while others are cautioning to hold the horses until more information is gathered.
The subject came up during a progress report at the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board meeting Monday given by the two board members who are on the consolidation committee along with two Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue board members.
The consolidation committee consists of YRFPD board’s vice president Drew Tracy and member Stan Wagaman, and COCF&R’s board president Jon MacCulloch and member Judy Thimakis.
Wagaman began his report by saying that during the group’s second meeting, which included a persuasive presentation by Central’s chief Jamie Mason and MacCulloch, there was consensus that a merger is the way to go.
“And perhaps a way to do that would be to start an intergovernmental agreement first,” Wagaman said. “… And it would include us sharing services, leadership, training, personnel, apparatus equipment, things like that. And we would try that out during a period of time,”
After that trial period, the relationship could then be reviewed and either scrapped or moved to the next level which in the end would require voter approval.
Mason and MacCulloch, who were also in attendance, provided the Yachats board with a draft agreement to review and tweak for further discussion.
Yachats fire administrator and volunteer chief Frankie Petrick said it was something for the board to discuss.
“You mentioned a merger, a merger means somebody’s losing out,” Petrick said. “We’re not looking at outlining a new district with the components we have now. I think I would like to hear a lot more about what would happen and not rush into (an) agreement.”
MacCulloch clarified the draft simply lays out rules required by state law as well as how things would work operationally but that no money would change hands between the districts.
“So essentially this document is going to lay out for us, like (Wagaman) was saying, for us to work as if we’re one operationally across the board,” MacCulloch said. “But we maintain our own pots of money. And if at the end of the day it’s showing that it is a betterment to the entire community that we do a merging …”
Mason added the next step is to “get into that document and start making decision on what you want to see the agreement providing for both of us.” He then brought up the executive (closed) session the Yachats board was having following its regular meeting to discuss a personnel matter as an example of how an agreement might be hammered out.
“If you are talking about the fire chief position for instance … and you said ‘Look we’d like to look at the possibility of sharing a chief, instead of paying for a full chief, a whole new chief’… that could be something that’s thrown into the agreement.”
There is a lot of open-ended area to decide what the districts want to bring to the table, he added, if the boards choose to move in that direction.
The Yachats and Central Coast districts each have a chief or administrator and office staff overseeing a department of six full-time firefighters who regularly respond to each others’ emergency calls and frequently train together.
Slow that talk?
But Yachats board president Doug Myers wanted to move slower.
“I don’t think we’re at that point,” said Myers, who spent his professional firefighting years with Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue. “In the past these things will usually start with a feasibility study by a third party that looks at all the strengths and weaknesses and needs. They look at the three legs on the stool – finances, operations, politics and culture. If one of those legs doesn’t work the stool falls over.
“So having been through this a bunch of times, that’s what I see that needs to happen first,” Myers continued. “Because I don’t think the board knows what we really want as far as those three areas.”
What came out of the last news article in the Lincoln Chronicle about a possible merger or consolidation, Myers said, “was people stopping us on the street saying ‘Are you guys crazy, this is going to cost us a lot more money, why in the heck would we do that?’ ”
Myers said he could not give them an answer because it has yet to be fully vetted.
Mason agreed a feasibility study would provide a lot of information but said it would also cost the districts a lot of money — money he does not think Yachats has after taking a cursory look at their financial statements.
“Yes, it does cost money,” Myers said. “But these things fall apart, pretty easily. I’ve been part of a full merger, a consolidation and then a contract with Oregon City. That one fell apart spectacularly. So this group had talked about doing baby steps. I’d need to have the facts before we even started talking about that.”
He then suggested that if they wanted to go forward, they should contact the Special Districts Association of Oregon to do a review. Yachats recently contracted with SDAO to review the district’s relationship with the nonprofit South Lincoln Ambulance that its firefighter/paramedics staff.
Myers then asked board members and Wagaman and Tracy in particular, if they were on board with moving in the direction of a feasibility study.
“I see the first step, and it’s a baby step really, it’s to form an IGA,” Tracy said. “And that would be the beginning. And it could be under a period of time where you could give it a year or we give it so many months that we look on and see what both boards think, what the operators think, what the public thinks, and then from that we can go to finalization where we look at consolidation and move forward.”
Hire an outside expert to look at it, Tracy continued, but added “We keep delaying things. I think it’s time we move forward.”
MacCulloch added they could do both, move forward with an intergovernmental agreement while also having SDAO do a parallel review.
Mason again brought up the cost of doing a study, which the two districts could split, but that Yachats may not be able to afford until the 2026-27 fiscal year.
“I’m just saying, when you consider these things, you have to be able to pay for these things,” Mason said.
Tracy and Wagaman agreed they would like to see movement on sharing leadership, training and personnel – and especially volunteers.
“But there are some other things we can do to share,” Wagaman said. “Finances aside … a lot of it is what we’re doing anyway. So we could just put it down (in writing) and pretty much it would be just like a merger, only finances are separate, policy and procedures are separate …”
Myers concluded the meeting by suggesting a workshop to review the draft intergovernmental agreement and said he would inform SDAO of their plans and then see where things stand.
- Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
Yachats, has a beautiful station!