Governor approves East Manatee-Myakka fire rescue merger

When Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill June 21 approving the scheduled merger of the East Manatee Fire Rescue District and Myakka City Fire Department, it represented the most recent step toward making the idea a reality.

There are less than three months until the merger is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1. The Manatee County Commission will need to vote to finalize the merger beforehand, likely in September, but East Manatee Fire Chief Lee Whitehurst said he expects it to pass without issue. Commissioners already voted to approve the merger in Aug. 2020.

Whitehurst said the two fire districts had been holding off on some aspects of the merger that couldn’t be started until after the state government approved the merger. Now that DeSantis has signed the bill, the two districts can begin discussing how buildings, vehicles and firefighters themselves will be affected by the merger.

“There's a lot of other things we have been able to do,” Whitehurst said. “If, for whatever reason, it did not get approved, it would have been just a waste of time, if anything. That's fine. We can move on. But this other stuff, those are permanent things when you're changing titles and deeds.”

East Manatee will soon assess Myakka’s two fire stations to see what might need upgrading and incorporate them into the fire district’s schedule for improving its own buildings. That could mean big tasks like strengthening them for hurricane season by installing hurricane-resistant glass, or smaller things like switching from incandescent light bulbs to LED bulbs.

After assessing how much improvements could cost, the district will decide where they fit in its five-year plan.

The East Manatee district will also take stock of its vehicles to see if there are any redundancies. If it decides, for example, that it won’t need as many brush trucks as the two districts have together, it could return some that the Myakka district is currently leasing. Two of Myakka’s fire engines are at or near the end of their lifespan, so they will be retired.

Another aspect of vehicle evaluation is assessing how Myakka’s vehicles differ from East Manatee’s vehicles, and therefore how much time it will take to train firefighters to work with the unfamiliar vehicles — whether it be 15 minutes or four hours. However, Whitehurst said his firefighters are finding out there aren’t as many differences as they thought there would be, which will make the process smoother.

On the human relations side, the districts have started to talk about what they should do with Myakka’s volunteer firefighter corps. East Manatee does not have volunteers. They will also discuss the sick days and vacation time of Myakka firefighters and how they will transfer to East Manatee.

One thing the East Manatee fire district has learned is that it won’t automatically inherit Myakka’s buildings and vehicles just because the county commission and Florida Legislature said it would absorb the Myakka fire district.

Therefore, with the help of an attorney, the two districts are working on an all-inclusive legal document to make it clear that East Manatee is the successor to Myakka’s fire district and inheritor of all its property. This is a time-sensitive task, as the Myakka district will lose all legal ability after Sept. 30.

Whitehurst said it will also take some time to merge financial accounts and pay off outstanding financial obligations for Myakka, such as the remainder of its power bill, which will not expire until a few months after the merger.

Myakka City Fire Chief Danny Cacchiotti and Myakka’s board of fire commissioners are all retiring at the end of September, which means Whitehurst and the East Manatee fire commissioners will tie up any loose odds and ends that emerge after the merger is finalized.