The Lake Cities Fire Department

Many of your may already know that the City of Corinth operates the Lake Cities Fire Department. It provides Fire and Emergency Medical services to all four of the 'Lake Cities': Corinth, Hickory Creek, Lake Dallas, and Shady Shores. All four of the Cities provide funding for the Fire Department through interlocal agreements (or contracts).

Several months ago we started the process of renewing the contracts. To renew the contracts, whether the contract is substantially changed or not requires both the Corinth City Council, and the Council of each member city (Hickory Creek, Lake Dallas, and Shady Shores) to approve the contracts by vote.

Tonight (March 8, 2012), the city staff updated us on the progress of the contract discussions with the other cities. At this point all seems to be going well. The contracts have to be signed and approved before the start of the next budget year, which is October 1, 2012. Actually, since each city has to work the cost of the fire department into their budget, it is far more likely that the contracts would need to be approved by late June to mid July. Corinth has a charter requirement that the budget be presented to the council for review by August 1 of each year.

In broad terms, the cost of providing fire and emergency medical services continues to increase, just like all other services and products in both the public and private sector. Thus, each member city will some level of increase in the new contract. Each year of the five year contract will also include increases indexed to the DFW Consumer Price Index. We are also proposing a Fire Vehicle and Equipment replace fund be established with defined contributions for each city.

So far we have received positive feedback on the contract, and at the moment, expect it to proceed smoothly ahead.