10-07-2021, 09:44 PM
(10-06-2021, 02:21 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Now, is there any particular reason why fire services have to be a city responsibility rather than regional, the way police and EMS are (not to mention transit, libraries and public health)?
Good question, but I can think of some reasons. For example, the way cities 'build' themselves often determines the amount of fire departments. A smaller compact city with equal populations means different amount of fire departments. Waterloo allegedly (it's not actually 140,000+, for like 110,000 at the most) has a similar population to Cambridge, but has 4 departments vs Cambridge' 6. Kitchener has 7 (and proposed 8th). Of the 3 cities, Kitchener has the least amount of stations for its size, so most likely more savings for the taxpayer. Fire Departments tend to be governed more by geography and density of the city vs population. If FD's were to become regional, then the region may have more of a say how cities build themselves. Re-arranging all the fire departments, like what Kitchener did, likely wouldn't fly at the regional level.
Compared to the police department(s), the amount of police officers (and cars) is more inline with population than area. Cruisers are always on the job, running around the cities -- so merging them didn't change much in terms of services, but there would have been savings when it comes to administration. Same applies to EMS, whenever the merger happened, and perhaps even back then there may have been agreed overlap (I believe EMS was always regional, but I might be wrong).
As far as I know, library's are still city run. Good reason for this, as different cities have different needs and means. And I think you can apply the same rules when it comes to pools, rinks (arena's) and community centres. Places like Kitchener and Cambridge (and outside of here, Toronto) like to have several different spots for these taxpayer facilities. Waterloo tends to follow the example of Mississauga, and will have entire facilities in one place. Some cities (like Kitchener) prioritize smaller facilities, but more of them, so they're available to more neighbourhoods, while places like Waterloo prefer a much smaller number of larger facilities.
As for transit, IIRC, there was always that desire to have 1 transit system for the region, but I believe there were some roadblocks with Cambridge wanting to have their own system only, and also intercity transit (like Greyhound) didn't want the competition.
I think another reason why FD's are separated is because of pride within and outside of each FD. This sort of pride doesn't exist as much in say, the police department. Nor in EMS.
As for function of each department, it might be quite a bit different, as well as wages. I'd guess it would go to the highest level, and not lowest.
Lastly, we'd need to consider if this is going to be a regional job, like EMS and PD, then the small departments outside the cities need to be equipped and staffed in a similar fashion. While personally I don't disagree with that idea, it would be very expensive.