{"id":25665,"date":"2020-01-16T17:42:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T22:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25665"},"modified":"2020-01-23T18:55:06","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T23:55:06","slug":"mayor-renews-calls-for-merged-regional-fire-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/mayor-renews-calls-for-merged-regional-fire-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor renews calls for merged Regional fire services"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Central York Fire Services, which serves Aurora and\nNewmarket, should expand to encompass Whitchurch-Stouffville as well, according\nto Mayor Tom Mrakas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Mrakas renewed his calls for further amalgamation\nwithin local fire departments last week at the Joint Council Committee\u2019s (JCC)\nfirst meeting of 2020, while adding he will continue to press the Region as a\nwhole to take a look at the matter this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The JCC is a group of Council members and staff from both\nAurora and Newmarket tasked with overseeing the operations of the Central York\nFire Services. (CYFS)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, Mayor Mrakas, who has previously floated a similar\namalgamation with the City of Richmond Hill, said JCC should give serious\nconsideration to working with the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville and their\nrespective fire department with an eye towards bringing fire services together\nunder one umbrella.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mayor\u2019s motion, which is expected to be discussed by\nthe JCC in March, calls on the Committee to \u201cinvestigate the potential\nconsolidation\u201d between the two groups as a \u201cfirst step\u201d towards a Regional fire\nservice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Mrakas tells The Auroran he has had conversations\nwith Whitchurch-Stouffville Mayor Ian Lovett, as well as Newmarket Mayor John\nTaylor, and Mayor Lovett was \u201copen to looking at\u201d the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe thought this was a good opportunity to investigate\nit,\u201d says Mayor Mrakas. \u201cSimilar as we did with Richmond Hill, it is no secret\nto anyone that I would like to see Fire become a Regional service. I have\nalways maintained that the way to do that is to start slowly, one step at a\ntime. If we can start to consolidate slowly, I think we will get to a point\nwhere it does make sense to be a Regional fire service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to potential cost-savings, Mayor Mrakas says\nhe believes further consolidation will lead to service efficiencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe there is immediate savings by\namalgamating, but I think you\u2019re able to provide a better service,\u201d he says.\n\u201cWhen it comes to fire, it is about safety of our residents and I want to\nensure that we are providing that best possible service. That is not to say the\nfire departments of each municipality is not providing top notch service,\nbecause they are, but sometimes\u2026 if there\u2019s a house or a building that is just\non the other side, there are so many things we have to look at. We have to have\nagreements between each other and it just doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo me, I think it will become a more efficient [service]\nwhich, in turn, makes the service level better for our residents and, in turn,\nmakes it safer for everyone. If Police can be a Regional service, why can\u2019t Fire?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Mrakas is expected to place a further motion on the\ntable at this week\u2019s meeting of Regional Council. The text of the motion, which\nwas released prior to Thursday\u2019s meeting, states a \u201cRegional Fire Service may\nachieve further operating efficiencies, improved department structure,\nincreased service level(s), and cost avoidance opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The motion, which calls on Regional staff to work with all nine York Region municipalities to report back on a Regional Fire Service\u2019s potential, will likely come up for discussion in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Central York Fire Services, which serves Aurora and Newmarket, should expand to encompass Whitchurch-Stouffville as well, according to Mayor Tom Mrakas. Mayor Mrakas renewed his calls for further amalgamation within local fire departments last week at the Joint Council Committee\u2019s (JCC) first meeting of 2020, while adding he will continue to press the Region as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6FX","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 11:09:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}