Editorial: Time to talk about possible merger of some city and county departments

Published 7:37 pm Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Members of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners reached out to the Dalton City Council Monday night in an effort to save taxpayers’ money and improve local services. We hope council members will accept that overture.

Board Chairman Lynn Laughter said with Dalton Fire Department Chief Bruce Satterfield retiring in April and with Dalton Parks and Recreation Department Director Steve Card announcing his resignation last month and expected to take a new post in early April (he is still working at the department), it would be an “opportune time” to discuss the merging of city and county fire protection, recreation departments or both.

The four other commissioners agreed that it would make sense to approach the Dalton City Council about combining the departments, as do we.

It has been five years since the two governments looked seriously at combining services.

In 2012, a commission created by the state Legislature to study consolidation of the city and county ultimately recommended against that idea but did recommend merging several departments including the recreation departments. Commissioners and council members discussed that idea for several months but could not agree on details such as staffing and funding.

The fire departments were not among the departments the merger commission recommended merging, but it did look at merging them. City and county officials also looked at merging them in 2009. Officials cited differences in staffing, compensation for firefighters and other issues as reasons for not going forward.

Quite a few things have changed since the last time the two governments looked at merging those departments. To take just a couple of examples, the Whitfield County Fire Department has beefed up its staff levels, and the county has closed its pension plan, just as the city of Dalton had previously done. Those are just two ways in which the differences between one of those departments have been reduced.

After reviewing their options, the two sides may agree that combining one or both of those departments doesn’t make sense. And if that’s the case, that’s fine. But the elected officials owe it to the voters and taxpayers to at least look at their options.