Will the Davis Fire Department Merge with UC Davis?

Last year, the city commissioned the consultants, Citygate to do a study of fire staffing needs.  Much to the chagrin of those who have advocated for a fourth Davis firestation, Citygate found that such an expensive endeavor may not be necessary. 

Their findings agreed that Davis needs more than 12 firefighters on-duty.  However, the report concludes that "In the combined developed area of Davis and UCD, four fire stations staffed with a total of 15 firefighters on duty are wholly adequate to cover the entire area, if deployed as one system."  Therefore, for the foreseeable future there is no need to build an additional station in North Davis.

The Citygate report then goes on to talk about mutual aid.  This report first presented a possibility of a more extensive collaboration with UC Davis than simply the mutual aid agreement.  What has developed is an almost perfect storm of the combination of economic crisis leading to the necessity of shared resources to cut down on costs along with retirements of both department's chiefs and other key personnel in leadership. 

The result of this perfect storm is that very serious talks are underway between the city of Davis' fire department and UC Davis' fire department about merging the two department..............