City of Columbiana Moves Forward with Plan to Build a More Sustainable Fire and EMS Department – Consolidation of Fire & EMS Aims to Strengthen Long-Term Staffing, Leadership, and Service Reliability as Community Needs Grow
COLUMBIANA, OHIO: The City of Columbiana today announced it is moving forward with a plan to consolidate its Fire and EMS Departments into a single, unified department, following a comprehensive independent assessment of both departments’ operations, staffing, and long-term service capacity.
The initiative is designed to position the City’s emergency services for long-term sustainability. As call volumes grow and the demands of modern fire and emergency medical response continue to evolve, the City determined that a proactive, structured approach, rather than waiting for pressures to build, offers the best path to reliable, high-quality service for residents for years to come.
“This is about strengthening a system that residents depend on, before strain becomes a crisis,” said Lance Willard, City Manager. “Our Fire and EMS personnel have shown real dedication to this community. Consolidation gives them a more sustainable structure to work within clearer leadership, more consistent staffing, and better long-term planning so they can keep doing that work well into the future.”
The consolidated Fire-EMS Department will bring administration, training, staffing, and operations under unified leadership, allowing the City to reduce duplicated functions, improve coordination between fire suppression and emergency medical response, and invest more directly in frontline service. Early on, the consultants recommended that we switch from performing the EMS billing internally to outsourcing the process. This has been implemented as of May 1st and is now handled by Medicount. The plan also calls for modernized training documentation, improvement plans, a formal staffing model aligned with national volunteer and combination-department standards, and a strengthened approach to succession planning ensuring the department is built to last beyond any single leader or generation of personnel.
Every current Fire and EMS employee will be retained through the transition. Employees will have the option not the requirement to pursue cross-training across both disciplines, with additional compensation for those who choose to do so. Only future new hires will be required to certify in both Fire and EMS at entry level.
“We know change like this takes time to get right,” said Lance Willard, City Manager. “We’re committed to an open, phased process that involves our Fire and EMS personnel every step of the way, so the department that comes out of this reflects the best of both.”
The transition is expected to take place in phases, beginning with community and staff engagement, records and policy review, and planning, followed by structural integration, a compensation study, and facility and equipment planning. The City will share updates with both departments’ personnel, residents and City Council throughout the process.
The City thanks the members of both the Fire and EMS Departments for their continued service and their partnership throughout this process.