One way or another, the city of Fort Oglethorpe’s fire department is getting restructured.
The city operates two stations manned by seven full-time employees and a host of part-timers and volunteers, covering both the city and certain parts of unincorporated Catoosa County. For its services to the unincorporated areas, the county pays the city $175,000 annually. But in August of this year, the county cut that funding for its 2019-2020 budget which went into effect Oct. 1, 2019.
Without that funding, the city and county met to discuss possible remediation. That began talks of an intergovernmental contract that would absorb the Fort Oglethorpe Fire Department into the county’s operations.
Under the agreement, the city would also make a one-time payment of $450,000 out of SPLOST funds to purchase new fire equipment and transfer all its existing fire protection equipment and related assets to the county. Station 1 would be leased to the county for $1 a year, the city’s shuttered Station 10 off Mack Smith Road would be leased to the county as a training facility or separate volunteer station, and the city’s Station 8 would close.
At the Catoosa County Board of Commissioners meeting Nov. 5, after an hour of executive session, that board unanimously approved the merger.