By Angie Francalancia
Mayors find consolidation consultants price steep
Less than a month after Boynton Beach city commissioners had put to rest the idea of closing Fire Station No. 1, which serves island residents, the topic popped up again — this time to accommodate the growing space needs of its Police Department.
City leaders from Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes, who contract with Boynton Beach for fire and emergency services, began meeting with Boynton Beach officials last month to discuss the long-term contract — including the possibility that rescue personnel could be housed in Ocean Ridge.
“We’re talking about different options for the fire department, and one of them is bringing the fire trucks back over here,” Ocean Ridge Town Manager Ken Schenck said.
The contract between Ocean Ridge and Boynton Beach contemplated the possibility of Boynton Beach Fire Rescue using the station at 6450 N. Ocean Blvd., but requires an architectural- and engineering-needs assessment of the station.
“It’s very preliminary, and a policy decision that our boards would have to make,” Boynton Beach interim City Manager Lori LaVerriere said. “I know Ocean Ridge is interested in discussing that, and that’s why we’ve encouraged our mayors to get together and discuss it.”
Schenck and Ocean Ridge Police Chief Chris Yannuzzi, who also serves as Briny Breezes’ town marshal, met with LaVerriere and interim Fire Chief Ray Carter late last month for the first of what’s expected to be several discussions.
None of the four was involved when the 12-year contract for fire-rescue services was negotiated and signed in May 2004, and the first step, they said, was to exchange documents to understand the history of those negotiations, Schenck said.
“Evidently, they were supposed to get rid of Station No. 1. They always had planned to have only four stations. But when we signed the contract with them, they kept it open,” he said.
Ocean Ridge will pay Boynton Beach $875,000 for fire-rescue service this budget year, one of four cities and the largest of the contracts with Boynton Beach for the service. Briny Breezes pays $293,200. Boynton Beach also has contracts to provide service to Hypoluxo and the village of Golf.
Response time questioned
Yannuzzi also has continued to push Carter for better information about what Yannuzzi perceives as rising response times.
“I’m letting them know that according to their own statistics their response is high,” Yannuzzi said. “I explained my position, and Ray said he’s going to talk to their person who does statistics.”
Yannuzzi has said he has seen an escalation in the number of calls where the response time is higher than the average eight minutes he believes was the expectation under the contract. He’s also concerned that Boynton Beach is tracking only the time between dispatch and arrival, not between when the call is placed and arrival.
A review of calls since Jan. 1 shows that in at least four months, more than half of the calls tracked more than six minutes from dispatch to arrival. Island officials believe that response times would rise to unacceptable levels if Station No. 1, the closest via bridge to the coastal towns, were closed.
Workshops discuss space
In an Oct. 4 workshop, Boynton Beach Police Chief Matt Immler suggested he could take over Station No. 1, which is adjacent to the police headquarters in the municipal complex at Boynton Beach and Seacrest boulevards.
Boynton Beach has tentatively set a workshop from 9 a.m. to noon on Nov. 19 at the city library, 208 S. Seacrest Blvd., to talk about the municipal complex, as well as other properties it owns that it has decided to sell. It’s part of a larger ongoing discussion about the vision for Boynton’s downtown and the municipal complex’s place in it, LaVerriere said.
“It is broad, and our commission still is vetting through all those options,” she said.
“We will be there,” Schenck said. “A couple of their commissioners just wanted to close Station No. 1. I don’t think they were really thinking that much about us. The staff was very understanding of our concerns, and they want to make it work for everybody. Obviously, we’re a big contract to them, and they don’t want to lose that.”
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