White Rock rules out outsourcing fire service
City struggling to keep fiscal head above water, but safety trumps savings
The City of White Rock has a very small tax base, so it’s constantly looking for ways to stretch a tax dollar.
But sometimes saving a buck isn’t worth it.
This was the case Tuesday when its council unexpectedly turned down an opportunity to save about $800,000 per year out of an annual $30 million operating budget.
To save that money, White Rock and its 19,000 taxpayers would have had to cut loose its 21-member fire service by contracting out the job to neighbouring Surrey.
Mayor Catherine Ferguson and her council wrestled with the controversial option for more than seven months as part of White Rock’s ongoing core-services review, which has already resulted in some contracting out.
As part of the fire-department analysis, the city hired two independent consultants to review the proposal’s impacts on public safety. It also retained KPMG to assess the financial impact of outsourcing, and that firm concluded the yearly savings could be in excess of $800,000.
These studies cost city taxpayers roughly $60,000, Mayor Ferguson told me Wednesday. But she says she’s confident it was worth every penny.
Under the proposal all firefighters at White Rock’s single firehall would have been transferred to Surrey’s fire department (where they’d receive increased pay and benefits). And despite the $800,000-plus in savings, the initiative would have triggered some service deterioration.
Not in the level of fire protection, mind you, but in the level of service for first-response medical calls.
The analysis showed that medical-response coverage would be superior only if the White Rock firehall continued under the current system — particularly during the first two minutes of travel time, and especially during evening hours.
Interestingly, after the four-minute mark, coverage under either the Surrey or White Rock scenario was equal. So the decision on whether or not to keep White Rock’s fire department as a city-owned service boiled down to mere minutes in medical response time. But this is hardly surprising, given White Rock’s heavy concentration of seniors. And it’s reflected by the fact that up to 70 per cent of its fire department’s emergency calls are for medical assistance, not to extinguish fires.
“At the end of the day, we felt that jobs and financial benefits do not come before safety,” Ferguson said. “One of the principles of this review was that levels of safety must either remain the same or improve. That didn’t happen [under the scenario for change].”
The council decision also represented a key victory for the firefighters themselves who, despite guaranteed job security with Surrey, opposed the original proposal.
“We’re elated the way this has turned out,” says spokesman Scott Booth. “We feel this is the best outcome for the citizens of White Rock. We thought the issue would at least have gone to a public hearing before a final decision was made, so this really surprises us.”
Finally, the mayor points out that electing to keep its fire department should help the debt-free city ward off critics who claim White Rock must amalgamate with Surrey to save tax dollars and/or improve services.
