The Alexandria and Southern Campbell Fire Districts are merging to form the Campbell Fire/Rescue in an effort the fire chiefs say has been a long time coming.
Talks of a merger go back to 2008 between the districts and Central Campbell, located in Cold Spring. The fire chiefs were reapproached about the merger in 2022, and a 16-month study was done with the two districts that included board members and command staff.
Southern Campbell Fire District Chief Jim Bell said this is his third time down the merger road in 15 years.
“We’ve looked at it a couple of times, and the studies have always kind of said that it’s important and it’s a great step, but everybody’s had enough active volunteers,” Alexandria Fire District Chief Tim Ford said, “It wasn’t time yet.”
Under the merger, both districts will remain physically where they are. Both fire chiefs agreed they couldn’t be more perfectly placed along U.S. 27, with Central Campbell being 5 miles from Alexandria and Alexandria being 6 miles from Southern Campbell.
Alexandria Fire District is located at 7951 Alexandria Pike, and Southern Campbell Fire District is located at 1050 Race Track Road.
Staffing will remain the same, with the goal of hiring three more full-time staff members at Southern Campbell’s firehouse.
“The crews will end up moving around so that they can know the area to be able to help cover overtime adequately, so the crews will move back and forth between stations,” Ford said. “As we start out, it is probably going to be minimal, and the longer we get into life, the more we’ll have guys moving back and forth, I would assume, which is a benefit for them (Southern Campbell) from the fact that our run volume is probably close to triple to that station.”
The coverage area between the two departments after the merger will be around 75 square miles, which both chiefs said was considered a big area for a department. Bell said the current district lines were drawn in 1976 when there was nothing out there, and the merger will be beneficial for the future should the need for another fire station arise.
“If we do get development that comes this way when we go to set up the next station, we don’t have to worry about boundaries,” Bell said. “We’ll put it where it needs to be. So, we won’t have two stations across the street from each other because of a boundary line set in 1976.”
How will the merger affect response times?
The fire chiefs said discussions and data collection were done, and the departments identified some areas where they could improve response times and took care of it over a year ago.
“It will decrease the response times—it will make it quicker to get more people there, but the road miles are the road miles,” Ford said.
The merger will have some cost-saving opportunities, but the chiefs said they are already operating very frugally.
“We both run very frugal to start with,” Ford said. “We’ve gotten a lot more aggressive in our pay to be more competitive in the area. There’ll be some small savings just from not having to duplicate stuff.”
The savings, they said, will mostly be on EMS supplies.
“We’re squeezing as tight as we can,” Bell said. “We’re squeezing every nickel.”
Bell said they are not considering raising the tax rate, and anything they are putting forward is based on the rate taxpayers are currently paying.
The fire chiefs said both departments are solid financially, both debt-free and have sound equipment.
Ford said both departments have already worked in tandem regardless of a merger.
“Over the last 50 years operationally, if we showed up on a fire, everybody acted like they were one department anyway, and that took care of business,” he said.
The official merger will go into effect on July 1 should the Campbell County Fiscal Court approve it at its March 20 meeting.
