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Wylie Fire Rescue outlines five-year plan; highlights EMS revenue, staffing and station planning
Summary
Fire Rescue presented a five-year plan covering staffing, EMS revenue projections, fleet replacements, a training tower under construction and long-term station siting and equipment life-cycle needs.
Wylie Fire Rescue presented a five-year plan to the city council at the March 25 meeting that outlined personnel needs, EMS operations and revenue, fleet replacement timelines, facility planning and a training-tower project expected to open in summer 2025.
Chief Blaise told council the department's current daily staffing is 25 personnel (19 fire-operations personnel and six EMS personnel) with three relief personnel assigned to cover vacancies, vacations and training. He said the department responded to about 7,600 calls in 2024 with roughly 14,000 unit responses and an average of 38 unit responses per day. Chief Blaise said Quint 141 is the busiest unit and that EMS now averages about 430 calls per month.
On revenue, the chief said EMS transport billing has begun producing substantial revenue: fiscal-year 2025 collections approached the department's projection of about $1.5 million, with the billing company projecting roughly $1.4 million through the remainder of the fiscal year and an FY26 projection of just over $2 million. He stressed these collections are intended to offset service costs and are not a profit-generating measure for the city.
Staffing needs identified in the plan include adding three relief firefighters to raise daily staffing ratios (the department's current staffing ratio is about 1.12 and would rise to 1.16 with three hires) and adding a fire inspector and a mental-health paramedic to respond with multiagency teams for behavioral-health calls. Chief Blaise also recommended assessing where a potential Station 5 should be sited in the southern/western growth areas and noted the city has funds in a fire-development fee to purchase land when a location becomes appropriate.
On fleet and facilities, he said heavy apparatus is in good shape but ambulance delivery times and costs have increased post-COVID; two ambulances ordered are expected in late May or early June. The department is nearing a 10-year replacement horizon for some front-line apparatus and is planning purchases now because build times can be 36 to 48 months. A training tower project is underway and expected to be available for training in summer 2025.
Chief Blaise also noted possible county emergency-service-district (ESD) activity affecting the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) and said staff will return to council for further discussion; he recommended a third-party standards-of-coverage analysis to support long-term station siting decisions and future ISO evaluations.
Council thanked staff for the detailed briefing and asked for further discussions on land acquisition and timing for additional stations or squads as growth continues.
