No merger for Oyster Bay fire companies

Oyster Bay hamlet's two independent fire companies will not merge -- for now.

In response to a June 1 deadline, Oyster Bay Fire Company No. 1 and Atlantic Steamer Fire Company No. 1 relayed their preferences to the Town of Oyster Bay. Oyster Bay members voted to immediately move forward with merger plans; their Atlantic Steamer counterparts did not.

"It just needs to happen naturally," said Atlantic Steamer Chief Ty Jiminez He added that his members instead approved forming their own merger committee to conduct a longer review. "It can't be jammed together in a year or two. There are some serious issues of command and how we do business."

Merger talks were sparked in March, after an attorney for a village served by the fire companies raised the issue at an unrelated town hearing. Town Supervisor John Venditto was receptive, and set a meeting between the principals.

At that meeting, in early May, the companies agreed to poll members. Venditto made Wednesday the deadline to gauge their intent, because the town would then have conducted a financial analysis in support of a plan.

Thursday, he said the town would let the companies set their own timetables.

"No one knows better than the volunteer firefighters themselves," Venditto said. "If we let them work on their own without any outside influences, my instinct tells me they will get to where they need to be."

Other consolidation proposals have failed over the past decade, after the villages served by the two companies -- Cove Neck, Mill Neck, Laurel Hollow and Oyster Bay Cove -- broached the topic.

The villages pay nearly half the companies' combined $1.2 million annual budgets, with the town providing the balance.

Oyster Bay Fire Company No. 1 Chief Anthony DeCarolis said his members were nearly unanimous in wanting an imminent merger plan. The next step would have been approving a plan, which would need a two-thirds majority of both companies.

"I think we could imagine response improvements as one department," DeCarolis said. "And while there aren't immediate plans to have one facility, hopefully someday we could."

While village leaders have said the companies have "redundancies" in vehicles and overhead costs, Jiminez said past proposals came with savings of no more than $100,000 -- or about $20 a household."I just don't see a tremendous amount of savings at the end of the day," he said.