Five years after West St. Paul and South St. Paul combined their fire departments, an outside consulting firm has given the South Metro Fire Department high ratings for efficiency, response time and service quality.

But the single department has not reduced costs as much as officials had hoped. Now the two towns -- which were among the first in the state to merge departments -- are considering cutting back emergency medical service or trading some full-time firefighters for on-call firefighters to save more money.

A telling statistic: The two cities pay $102 per capita for their fire service, compared with an average state per-capita cost of $69.

"We do offer extraordinary service for ambulance and fire, which has made both communities very happy, but clearly we are paying a premium for our service," said South St. Paul Mayor Beth Baumann.

By merging the cities' departments into one, called the South Metro Fire Department, the two cities with a combined population of about 40,000 were able to hold spending steady, said Emergency Services Consulting International, which studied the department over several months and recently submitted a report.

"They have done a phenomenal job of keeping the budget within 1.5 percent of where it was five years ago. That is just amazing," said Phil Kouwe of Emergency Services Consulting.

The consultants found that the department's two stations are correctly located and that with four fire engines, three ambulances, a ladder truck, a rescue boat and 38 full-time personnel, the department has adequate staff and apparatus. It reaches 90 percent of all incidents in both cities in less than seven minutes.

The higher operating cost of the combined department, compared to the state average, is in part explained by the fact that many communities do not offer emergency medical service. But even disregarding that, a full-time paid fire force does cost more, Kouwe said.

"Regardless of how good the quality of service is and the fact that we gave the department an outstanding grade, I am not surprised at all that those cities are taking a hard look at what they are spending," he said.

Cities across the country are grappling with "how to handle the economic downturn and meet the expectations of citizens," Kouwe said.

In an unusual arrangement, the South Metro department responds to the same emergency medical calls answered by HealthEast ambulances, because the city can get to the scene faster. Once there, they decide who will handle the call.

"We need to work closely with HealthEast to try to define what the service level will be," Baumann said. "If we can keep from duplicating efforts, that probably would be better than both of us showing up."

The fire board also should examine how much longer fire response times would be if some paid-on call firefighters -- often know as volunteer firefighters, even though they're paid -- were added to reduce personnel costs, Baumann said.

For both the ambulance and fire protection, the cities need to find the right combination of service and cost, she said.

The discussion is likely to begin with a look at what neighboring cities are paying for fire protection, said West St. Paul Council Member David Wright, who serves on the South Metro fire board.

The merger did save money, Wright said. As separate departments, their budgets would each have risen about 3 percent annually compared to the 1.5 percent increase over five years for the combined department, he said.

Another financial benefit of the merger was the receipt of more than $1 million in grants for apparatus replacement. "As separate departments, we would have been too small to qualify for grants of that size," Wright said.

That said, the next step is to "take the department to the next level ... and potentially find new ways of operating to save the residents of both cities even more money," he said.

When comparing the service provided by career and on-call departments, the key difference is response time, and response time depends on whether firefighters are ready and waiting in their stations, Kouwe said.

Full-time firefighters who are at the station ready to go can get to an emergency faster than on-call firefighters who have to drive to the station.

Once they are on the road, service is similar because all firefighters are trained and certified, but the difference in response time is time when a fire can be growing or a medical emergency getting worse, Kouwe said.

Communities that enjoy the lower cost of a paid on-call fire department generally understand that there will be some increase in response time, Kouwe said.

Discussion of the fire department's future is expected to extend into next year for both cities.

Laurie Blake • 952-746-3287