SANTA CLARA — There were two city recorders, two city attorneys and two city councils in the council chambers of Santa Clara Town Hall Wednesday night. 

In a Southern Utah first, the city councils of both Ivins and Santa Clara held a joint meeting Thursday night with the main subjects being the cities’ joint fire and police departments. The heat of a recent dispute between the two cities over the Center Street Fire Station in Ivins being unmanned with firefighters since the start of the year simmered down after Santa Clara City Manager Brock Jacobsen and Santa Clara-Ivins Fire Chief Andrew Parker offered a short-term fix where the Santa Clara will use its existing budget to get the station fully operational within the next week.

Noting some heated words had been said by Ivins officials in their own council meetings, Santa Clara Mayor Rick Rosenberg told St. George News after the meeting that with council members of both cities sitting at the same table, rhetoric gave way to compromise.

“When they’re sitting within an arms reach, you’re a lot more careful about what you say,” Rosenberg said. “That’s just the nature of the beast.”

The five council members of each city sat across from one another at a long table, as did the mayors. Rosenberg led the meeting, with his Ivins counterpart Chris Hart expected to fill the role when Ivins hosts the next joint meeting in December or January. 

The chambers were filled with residents from both cities necessitating the need for additional seating. There was also a strong presence by members of the Fire Department, with more than one person in the audience commenting that it seemed like the entire department was there. 

Echoing his fellow mayor, Hart told St. George News the joint meetings are something both cities should have done earlier as soon as they linked both their police and fire departments – with Santa Clara handing oversight and budgeting of fire and Ivins doing the same for the police. He said the groundwork laid out in the first joint meeting Wednesday will mean both cities will be better able to coordinate their separate budgets to ensure each is getting what they want from their public safety departments. It’s a matter of continual refinement, he added. 

“I think we’ve listened very carefully to each other. If we know what the concerns are,” Hart said. “For us to get together twice a year and talk about those issues – that’s going to work out in the future.”

Short-term fix for fire

Eluding to complaints by Ivins Council members in their own meetings about the speed of getting the Center Street station fully operational, Jacobsen said he tasked the fire chief with using existing budget resources to get things done, rather than waiting for additional budget amendments from Santa Clara that could lengthen the time it takes to get firefighters and emergency medical technicians based 24/7 at Center Street. 

“To make that happen, I asked Chief Parker to go back in his budget and see what we can do with what we have,” Jacobsen said.

The solution presented to the council members Wednesday was using existing budget funds to immediately place three full-time captains into positions at Center Street and also move three existing part-time firefighters and EMT to full-time positions. 

The sacrifices will be made by lowering the number of fire personnel at the Santa Clara Rachel Drive station and also sacrificing, at least temporarily, most of the department’s wildland fire efforts. 

“We’re not doing wildland this year,” Parker said. “If you move things one way it has to come from something else.”

Council members on both sides appeared to favor the idea, though many also noted that it is only a short-term fix. Santa Clara Council member Ben Shakespeare called it a “step in the right direction” but added it will only fix things in the short-term and this winter both councils will need to jointly figure out how they will fund the additional fire services in the long-term whether through relying on more revenue from the growth of more development or increasing property tax rates. 

“I personally am very impressed with what both Brock and Chief Parker did to manipulate things. But it puts things off,” Hart said. “You’re gonna have to pay the piper at some time on needed equipment and supplies and whatnot, but it does allow us to hold together.”

Both mayors said they were left “shaking their heads” after financial help for the Fire Department was denied by Washington County Commission following a meeting earlier Wednesday on the contention from both cities that the county should help pay for the fire and rescue efforts on the outskirts of Ivins and Santa Clara, mainly on unincorporated county land along Old Dixie Highway 91 to the Arizona border. 

The commissioners said they were told no additional funding would be forthcoming unless the cities let go of their control of the Fire Department for it to become a special tax fire district like the Hurricane Valley Fire District. Under that scenario, the Fire Department would separate into an independent entity that sets its own tax increases and policy outside the jurisdiction of the city governments. 

Such an idea was alarming to Shakespeare. 

“I think we can do this without a big burden to the residents,” the Santa Clara Council member said. “With a district, the burden would fall on residents even more and we wouldn’t have the ability to ask, ‘Do we want that?’”

When asked by Ivins Council member Mike Scott how “immediate” Center Street could be fully up and running – something Scott has been asking in Ivins Council meetings since early June – Parker said there are some hiring and personnel moves that still have to be finalized but added it could be done “within the week.”

That satisfied Scott.

“I would call that immediately,” Scott said. 

The move still faces further discussion Thursday night when Ivins holds its regular council meeting.

Also facing continued scrutiny was Parker’s continued efforts to shift the Fire Department away from relying on volunteers into a more fully-trained staff that always has someone on duty. 

Defending the moves, Parker said he was distressed on the first day of taking on the chief role in February to see only two firefighters on duty at the Rachel Drive station, with only one of those two fully trained. He said the department’s scheduling with 12-hour shifts was haphazard with not knowing when volunteers would be on duty.

He said in March, there was an average of four days a week where there was nobody assigned to fire engine duty and just as much of a deficit of available EMTs on duty. He said now, just about every schedule slot is filled for August.

“We didn’t see a need to reinvent the wheel. We moved to 24-hour shifts,” Parker told the councils. “These are extremely tough personnel decisions. That’s the bottom line that will get us to full staffing.”

Parker said there will still be room for volunteers, which is something that drew the approval of Ivins City Council member Lance Anderson, a former fire volunteer himself. 

“We need firefighters. I agree on that, but with volunteers, if they show up, it makes a difference,” Anderson said. 

A contrary opinion was voiced by Ivins Council member Dennis Mehr, who said he was still concerned that by moving to a more full-time personnel, the Santa Clara-Ivins department may still lose something.

“Culture trumps strategy every time. If strategy conflicts with how people already believe, it will fail,” Mehr said. “There may be a vision at play but if we destroy the culture and process, we have problems.”

Police looking for bigger paychecks

Along with fire, the cities’ joint police departments also were a focus of the meeting, with Santa Clara-Ivins Police Chief Bob Flowers making a push to increase the salaries of the two cities’ police officers. 

Noting that the police budget is “80% personnel,” Flowers compared the starting pay of $24.50 for his officers against what he said was the $30 per hour starting pay for Utah Highway Patrol officers.

“In my 40 years of law enforcement, it’s always an issue in good times and bad times. If you want good officers, you need to pay for it,” Flowers said. “We’re requesting  a significant pay increase.”

With the budget it has, Flowers and other police officials mentioned the department will be adding an additional full-time officer and vehicle in the next year and is aiming to add four more full-time officers by 2028. 

Already locked in is a 25% increase in training including more de-escalation efforts as well as training to better work with individuals with autism. 

In a twist on Ivins officials criticizing Santa Clara’s shift of fire resources to Rachel Drive in the south, Rosenberg noted that as the police, overseen by Ivins, has moved into a new headquarters at the former Ivins City Hall, it has abandoned having full-time officers at Santa Clara Town Hall – something Flowers noted would be remedied soon.

“I miss having them here. We’ve still got space for them upstairs,” Rosenberg said. “If we have a resident that comes here and needs to talk to somebody, the ability to have an officer here … that’s big.”

Flowers also said something else is in need of addressing in the two cities: animal control. He said the department’s animal control position will be moving from part-time to full-time.  

“It’s something we don’t often talk about,” Flowers said. “At some point, our two cities are going to need to invest in our animal shelters. We’re just outgrowing our animal shelters. I know it’s not the highest priority but it’s something we need to take care of.”

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