Hopkinton, Ashland Interested in Collaborative Fire Departments

Massachusetts is a state where regionalization isn’t uncommon; there are regional schools and regional planning committees. One type of regionalization that is not found any where in the state yet though is a regionally shared fire department.

Thanks to an innovation grant from the state, Hopkinton and Ashland are preforming a feasibility study to find out the best ways to make the two departments work as one and improve the quality of service.

“Right now Hopkinton and Ashland are both very good at responding to the first call, the second and third calls can often be harder because of the amount of man-power we have,” Hopkinton Fire Chief Ken Clark said. “We need to look at this and see what the benefits are because weak plus weak doesn’t always equal strong.”

According to a press release from the Governor’s office, the $175,000 Hopkinton received for this study is part of $4 million give out this year Community Innovation Challenge grant program.

“The CIC grant program’s focus is to incentivize and support innovative regionalization and other cost saving initiatives that will help local governments increase cost-efficiency while maintaining service delivery,” the release said.

Clark said service is important for him, to his town and to the firefighters he works with in the town.

“My responsibility to the townspeople and to my firefighters and I need to figure how to serve my people the best,” Clark said.  “I personally have a huge buy-in on the concept; it just needs to be done right and it needs to work well.”

The collaboration effort began several years ago when the departments received a grant from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council to look at the number of calls each department got and whether it would be possible for them to work together.

Clark said this grant will take a look at what will need to be done to ensure both unions are satisfied if this moves forward, all local and state laws are followed if this moves forward and will look in to what operational changes will need to be made so the two departments will be able to operate properly.