Mayor Steve Gold, second from right, and council members (from left) Jerry Landisi, Charles Kelly, and George Mansfield, discuss the recommendations

BEACON – A consulting firm Monday night recommended that the Beacon City Council create a hierarchy of a fire administrator and volunteer fire chief, and consolidate its three firehouses into one to better serve the 4.5-square-mile city and its 14,000 residents.

“This is going to be an emotional issue,” said Mayor Steven Gold after Marc Morse of MMA Consulting Group of Brookline, MA, summarized a 65-page report before an audience of about 35, many of them firemen. 

“Some of the recommendations, really if they are implemented, will make changes in the way the fire department is organized and the way it operates,” he said. “It’s very important to have buy-in on the part of the volunteers. Our system here is a hybrid of career firefighters, who are paid, and volunteers and volunteers make up the larger majority of people who fight fires.”

Morse said the three existing firehouses have enormous history that the city should try to preserve. The long-term plan is costly, calling for a new firehouse and a new pumper/ladder truck.

The fire administrator would handle the day-to-day operations; the fire chief would handle emergency responses. The plan calls for more training, including having the volunteer firemen learn to drive the fire engines to complement the career firemen. The consultants also suggest an aggressive recruitment and retention effort.

Gold said there would be more meetings on the report and eventually the fire advisory committee would make recommendations to the city council. He said the MMA report would be on the Beacon website (www.cityofbeacon.org) today.