The city of Cottonwood has been invited to join fire districts from across the Verde Valley as part of a committee that looks at the benefit of sharing services.
The committee had its genesis more than a year ago when the Camp Verde and Montezuma-Rimrock fire districts started looking at the potential benefits of working together.
The districts, which depend on property taxes for most of their funding, had been looking to find ways to streamline as the economy went into recession and revenues took a hit, leaving their budgets to take a hit.
“They explored the idea of shared services,” said Cottonwood Fire Chief Mike Kuykendall. “It culminated with sharing a chief and some of their administrative staff between agencies and the sharing of resources for both financial and operational improvement.”
That shared chief is Chief Terry Keller, who was originally the head of Montezuma-Rimrock Fire District.
Based on the success the two districts experienced from sharing services, Kuykendall said that Keller started asking if other regional agencies would like to get involved.
This led to the formation of the Greater Verde Valley Emergency Services Sub-Committee, Kuykendall said, a group that looks at ways to make things more efficient without compromising firefighter safety.
“It has been established to bring together representatives of the fire services throughout the Verde Valley,” Kuykendall said.
So far, Camp Verde, Montezuma-Rimrock, Verde Valley, Sedona and the Clarkdale fire districts are participating, Kuykendall said.
The Jerome Fire Department declined the invitation, Kuykendall said.
“Jerome didn’t really see that there was much in this arrangement to work for them,” Kuykendall said. “All the others have agreed to form
this subcommittee.”
The idea is for members of the group to take their ideas back to their respective agencies and also bring back any information from those agencies.
“The committee has no power to implement anything to pass along costs to anybody,” Kuykendall said.
The Cottonwood City Council voted Nov. 17 to appoint City Manager Doug Bartosh to the committee.
Councilman Tim Elinski cast the lone vote opposed to the appointment.
Elinski said he wasn’t opposed to the idea of the committee but he had concerns that Bartosh might already have too much on his plate to take on the task.
“I’m worried that he’s busy with hundreds of other meetings throughout the week,” Elinski said. “We’re already a fairly busy city.”
He asked if Kuykendall wouldn’t be a better Cottonwood representative on the committee.
Kuykendall said that the other districts are actually sending members of their governing boards to participate on the committee.
Cottonwood’s situation is a bit different because the city has a municipal fire department and doesn’t have one dedicated board to deal specifically with the business of fire and EMS service.
“They initially asked for one of our council members to participate,” Bartosh said. “It’s a bit different for us, council members don’t typically get that deeply involved with one department of the city.”
When it comes to looking at ideas and getting a handle on whether they would be financially feasible for the city of Cottonwood, Bartosh said he might be a better candidate but added that if a council member wanted the position on the committee, it would happen.
Having a municipal department means that Cottonwood won’t need to share services the city already provides for its departments across the board, like human resources staff.
“We’d only look for things that make sense for us,” Kuykendall said.
He said that the chiefs of the districts are at the committee meetings; Bartosh noted that Kuykendall would serve as his alternate if he couldn’t make a meeting.
The committee had to cancel its last two meetings due to lack of a quorum, Kuykendall said.
The original idea was for the committee to meet once a month but Kuykendall said the committee was still in the organizational phase and working things out.
“Cottonwood’s always strived to be a good partners with the districts,” Mayor Diane Joens said. “When there are fire or medical calls we’re all in there together to help those who need help.”
