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SHFR Independence: Too Hot To Handle

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By JOHN HERBERT

From Where I Sit

Published: October 26, 2008

Last January, I wrote a column predicting that the suggested Spring Hill Fire Rescue merger "would be too hot for commissioners to handle, particularly with three of them up for reelection later this year ... they'll toss (the issue) back to the voters in the shape of a referendum."

Well, here we are — a week before Election Day, but I'm not feeling very smug about what was supposed to be a rather cynical observation.

The future of Spring Hill's fire district is, indeed, on the ballot as a referendum question. A "yes" vote means Spring Hill can go ahead and ask Florida's Legislature to endorse the fire district's independence from Hernando County.

A "no" vote, on the other hand, means simply that Spring Hill Fire Rescue will eventually be consolidated into the rest of Hernando County's emergency operations, saving the taxpayers at least $500,000 a year. That's no small change in anyone's budget.

"No" does not mean that Spring Hill's fire engines will be jacked up on blocks or that their tires will be locked away in some backwoods Brooksville shed — even though Spring Hill Fire Rescue's union propaganda might lead an unwary Hernando Countian to fear the worst.

The risk, after Election Day, is that the consolidation issue still won't be settled. At the very least, parties representing both sides of the highly-emotional matter will spend a couple of years on the long road up to Tallahassee.

At worst, Spring Hill activists will file a series of legal challenges that could tie up consolidation in the courts for another decade.

We got a taste of what's sure to come at a recent board meeting of the county commissioners. A candidate for the Spring Hill Fire District's board complained that she had not received information about a consolidation's potential savings until "two weeks before...the referendum."

"That doesn't give me time to study, research and make up my mind," whined the protester. How much time do you actually need to decide on a potentially half-million dollars' savings?

Hogwash, anyway. County Administrator David Hamilton insisted the information "has been out there for months." And the whole flammable merger issue has been bandied about for eight long years.

Hamilton is correct. Last May, in another column, I said the merger of the two fire rescue units is "inevitable, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings being produced by the combination." The source was a county commission board meeting a week earlier.

I could breathe more easily. I wasn't dreaming or otherwise making up what Hamilton later confirmed in writing.

Neither the population nor the land area of Hernando County warrants more than one fire rescue department. Operations would not be compromised by combining Spring Hill's and Hernando County's emergency units.

Only a few egos would be bruised. But that's a small price to pay for annual savings in excess of $500,000.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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