BRAZOS COUNTY, Texas — The cities of Bryan and College Station have recently discussed what the future of emergency response and aid would look like in their respective cities during city hall meetings.
The response deficit between the College Station Fire Department and Bryan Fire Department is outlined in an agreement made 25 years ago that will soon expire.
In 1997, the cities of Bryan and College Station made an automatic aid agreement, meaning all calls are responded to by both cities, regardless of where the call originated.
Now, the city of College Station wants reimbursement for the calls they respond to.
“It was a disproportionate level of aid that was given versus what was received,” said Fire Chief Richard Mann, City of College Station.
After years of no aid given on behalf of College Station’s EMS services, Chief Mann says they have to review the budget to see what funds are available.
“We look at funding,” Chief Mann said.
“What is the impact on the budget when we add resources? How does that impact both one time and the reoccurring expenses? Those are some of the factors that we would consider as we look at expanding our department or being able to meet the needs of the community.”
Within the automatic aid agreement, Station No. 6 responds the most to city of Bryan calls, due to its close proximity to North Bryan.
“You can see our population density is very much centered around station 1,” Chief Mann said.
“District 6 is second in that as well, so we see that population density on the northern side of our city, and again, you can see we knew that the University Drive corridor was not going to be getting any less dense or less developed.”
Chief Mann wants the community as well as city council to know station 6 serves a large, yet growing population.
When Bryan needs assistance, this pulls resources away from University Drive location.
“We have a lot of people there and we have a lot of demands for service in that area,” Chief Mann said.
“That is within our jurisdiction. It’s within our city. It’s within our responsibility to be able to manage the service demands within our jurisdiction."
From 2018 to 2020, Bryan fire and College Station fire collected the data of responses to calls.
College Station responds to four times more calls than Bryan.
“10 percent of our responses during that three-year time period were into the city of Bryan where we were receiving no financial compensation for that,” Chief Mann said.
According to the city of Bryan, Bryan Fire will receive an additional ladder truck by October of this year.
Bryan stated in a revised agreement they would reimburse college station $240 for transport within the city limits if College Station did not receive payment from insurance or the patient.
College Station says this is not enough to offset the costs of their taxpayers.
Automatic aid will remain in place for high acuity, life threatening calls and mutual aid for low acuity calls.
What the new proposed agreement will entail is still up for debate.
The next city of college station meeting is Thursday, Mar. 23.
The next city council meeting for Bryan is not determined at this time.