Patagonia residents and volunteer firefighters passionately lobbied the Patagonia Town Council during a three-hour meeting last Wednesday to continue to contract with Patagonia Volunteer Fire & Rescue (PVFR) for the Town’s fire and emergency medical services.

The special non-voting meeting, officially called a ‘workshop,’ featured presentations by PVFR Acting Fire Chief Zay Hartigan and Sonoita-Elgin Fire District (SEFD) chief Marc Meredith. PVFR and SEFD have each submitted bids for a one-year, $70,000 contract to provide the Town with fire protection and emergency services starting July 1. The bids were in response to a Request for Proposal sent out by the Town in February, the first time in memory that the Town formally considered any agency other than the 100-year-old PVFR to provide these services. 

Attendance was high at last Wednesday’s workshop, with Council chambers at capacity (47 people) at the meeting’s 6pm start time, and many more waiting to get in outdoors. Over 60 people viewed the proceedings via Zoom. At least one armed Sheriff’s deputy was present in the Council chambers for the entire meeting.

The tone of the workshop was civil, and the two fire chiefs, who took questions and comments from Council members as well as members of the public, were cordial–even warm—towards each other, probably no surprise as the two agencies are linked via a mutual aid agreement and work together regularly, and SEFD Chief Meredith is a Patagonia resident.

The two agencies, suddenly vying for the Town contract, are very different animals. SEFD is a fire district with a $2.1 million annual budget, funded mainly through property taxes, governed by a board of directors and staffed by a mix of full-time professionals and volunteers. PVFR is a nonprofit volunteer organization with an annual budget of around $155,000, principally funded by its contract with the Town and two annual public fundraiser events; its board is elected by its members.

At the workshop, local residents said they were troubled by the possibility that the five-person Town Council would move the Town’s $70,000 annual contract from PVFR to SEFD, and sought to understand what the consequences of such a move might be—as well as why it was even being contemplated in the first place.

PVFR‘s Zay Hartigan, who has been the department’s acting chief for the last eight months following former chief Tim Regan’s sudden resignation, acknowledged in his opening remarks that PVFR had been through a difficult period over the last few years at an organizational level, which he attributed to enduring personality conflicts borne from misunderstandings and mistrust. 

“Everyone needs to settle down, pull together, let bygones be bygones,” Hartigan said. “I think that most of the department is pretty much done with squabbling and ready to just team up and be a team… We’re putting down some benchmarks going forward, and if we can’t show improvement by this time next year, we should step out of the race [for the Town contract]. I’m not saying that we’re going to have everything in a year but I think that we are going to have great improvement in a year and we will be showing that that improvement is going to continue. It’s going to take a while for us to catch up. But I think we absolutely can do it.”

Under questioning from Mayor Andy Wood, Hartigan acknowledged that the department did not presently meet several of the prerequisites for a contract that the Town’s RFP demanded. But later in the evening, asked if she was saying there was in fact wiggle room on those requirements, Mayor Wood said, “Yeah. And there’s ways that there could perhaps be funding to help the members get those qualifications that they need. It’s not an impossible task to get certified as a structural firefighter and get certified as EMTs or even beyond that. So it’s not an impossible task.”

Mayor Wood continued, “And I just want to make the comment that it is not the goal of the Council to get rid of the [Patagonia] fire department. I don’t know where that rumor started, who started it and why that has become an issue. That is not our goal. Our goal is to create something that we feel protects our community and that we move forward, and we expand on it and we get better. So if you guys are thinking that we’re trying to get rid of the department, you are wrong. We are not trying to do that. Please understand that.”

Speaking directly to PVFR members and supporters in the Council room, Mayor Wood said, “I feel like your department wants to do the best they can. They want to be as professional as they can and offer the best service that they can to the Town of Patagonia. So I don’t see it as a no-win situation. I see it as moving forward and improving the department and the relationships between the Town and the fire department.”

PVFR member Juan Yanez voiced frustration with the Town’s process that many in PVFR seemed to be feeling. Speaking to the Mayor and Council, Yanez noted that SEFD Chief Meredith, Mayor Wood and members of the Town Council all said they hoped PVFR would continue, whether or not it kept the Town’s contract. 

“It kind of seems like you’re asking for us [PVFR] to keep doing what we’re doing—without $70,000,” Yanez said. “Well, we’re looking for that funding that the Town gives our department so we can better improve ourselves. It’d be a killer if we didn’t get that this coming June for the following year. 

“Let’s see what happens in a year,” he said. “Because we’ve gotten quite a few new members, younger members that are willing to go through the academy for structure [firefighting certification], and a handful of people who are willing to do EMT classes, which we’re looking at getting an instructor [for] to do the classes here. [But] it all takes money.”

Mayor Wood said the five members of the council will vote on awarding the contract sometime before the end of June. She said that although members of the public couldn’t vote on the issue, they could submit a letter to the Council. 

“You can bring that to us and say, Look, we have this letter saying how many people want the Fire department to stay—which, I would say, is everybody.”

The Council’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 14 at at 6pm.

Got an opinion? Send a Letter to the Editor for publication in the print edition of the PRT. Email your submission to editor@prtnews.org. We reserve the right to edit submissions for language, length and clarity.