Fire Service Consolidation Study

The purpose of this study is to evaluate opportunities to enhance operational efficiency, improve value, strengthen resiliency, and deliver a consistent level of fire-safety services for Northern Beaufort County.
Objectives
• Eliminate jurisdictional response boundaries in Northern Beaufort County.
• Strengthen resiliency through unified planning, resource deployment, and operations.
• Standardize compensation and benefits among participating agencies.

Beaufort County has 9 independent Fire Service Agency's. 3 are within municipality's, others are State Chartered, and the balance are county chartered. Each operates as its own taxing agency or as a PSD. Fire Service Consolidation efforts have been discussed and attempted for more than 30 years, but no effective progress has been made towards this effort. Beaufort County Council would like to move forward to identify and implement a solution in an effort to standardize employee compensation and benefit's, erase response boundaries created by independent departments, and a single level of service and command structure county wide.