A joint headquarters will be located in a Pleasanton fire station to be built on that City s border with Livermore. Currently, Livermore is covering 54 percent of these expenses, Pleasanton 46 percent. Each city maintains the right to determine the number of fire stations and firefighters it needs, so growth in one city does not affect the other city s fire service costs. One of the management improvements resulting from the consolidation was the movement of top officers in both departments into full-time specialty roles. Before consolidation, Division Chiefs in both departments managed responsibilities such as emergency operations, training and emergency medical services on a part-time basis.
Effectiveness is improved in the consolidated agency with full-time managers for each function.
The combined local immediately agreed to joint promotional testing, and the several promotions which since have been made have contributed to the blending of the two cities fire services. A single training system serves both cities firefighters. Managed by a Division Chief, it uses a modern training tower and classroom located in Pleasanton. Dispatch services were consolidated in Livermore s public safety communications center, as it was larger and better suited to handle the workload created by the consolidation of the departments. Ten committees of employees were assigned specific areas of responsibility and were trained by a consultant to work together effectively on the re-engineering which the merger required.