Garland committee reviews $13–$16M estimate to move fire and EMS to 24/72 shifts, considers smaller-cost partnership option

Garland’s Fire & EMS Stakeholder Committee on its third meeting reviewed preliminary cost estimates and budget trade-offs for moving the department to a 24/72 shift schedule, a change city staff said would require significant new staffing or an outside transport partnership.

CFO Matt Watson told the committee that an in-house 24/72 model — keeping ambulance transport under the fire department — would likely require about 87 additional positions, raise operational staff to about 348 across four shifts and carry an annual operating cost estimated between $13 million and $16 million. "It's a very complicated task to calculate the exact cost," Watson said, adding that long-term liabilities such as health insurance and COLA must be factored in.

Staff presented an alternative: a partnership model in which most ambulance transports would be handled by a private or external provider while Garland retained core emergency response. That scenario, staff said, could reduce the incremental cost to a range of $0 up to $5 million a year, require only a handful of new city positions (about five), and raise operational staff to roughly 260 on four shifts. Watson cautioned that the $5.1 million in EMS transport revenue currently collected by the city would likely flow to the partner and must be considered in any final fiscal picture.

Budget Director Allison Belstaffan framed the forecast within the city’s five-year general fund model and noted structural constraints. Garland’s FY26 adopted general fund is $257.2 million; public safety accounts for about 67 percent of that total. Belstaffan and Watson stressed that state law (SB 2) limits how much property-tax revenue the city can realize in a year, constraining options to fund recurring costs without a voter-approved rate change.

Staff offered an example of tax-rate impact if the city funded the in-house scenario through property taxes: an estimated 5–6¢ increase in the tax rate, equivalent to about $130–$160 annually for the typical Garland homeowner. The partnership scenario was presented as producing roughly a 1–2¢ tax-rate impact under staff assumptions, assuming no additional apparatus purchases.

Committee members pressed staff for additional data. The group asked for a clearer overtime savings estimate (staff said overtime should decline in theory under 24/72 but quantifying the reduction remains an open item), the debt-service obligations tied to apparatus purchases, and detailed revenue implications if ambulance transport were outsourced.

The committee took no formal action on the proposals. Staff said they would continue outreach to peer agencies for overtime and implementation data and return with more refined cost estimates and options for funding, including a potential voter-authorized tax-rate swap to move debt-service cents into operations (a step the city is exploring for a November 2026 election).

The committee also recorded a procedural approval of the October minutes by voice vote before the financial presentation.