If you call 911 in Sterling for a house fire.
Who should come to your rescue, Sterling or Rock Falls?
In many cases, both city fire departments will respond.
That's because the two have a mutual aid agreement.
And that led Sterling leaders to wonder if they should merge services with Rock Falls.
A study's been done and the report is in.
The study finds there wouldn't be enough savings for Sterling and Rock Falls to combine their fire departments into one big one.
But, it does recommend combining the command structures.
Instead of having two fire chiefs, and two assistant chiefs for each department.
The recommendation is to cut one out and share a chief and two deputy chiefs.
"Some people tend to think about Friday night, Rock Falls, Sterling, and really that's not reality," says Sterling Mayor Skip Lee.
He says the two cities may be divided by a river, but people consider themselves one community. A community that's fallen on hard times.
"We lost three major factories here over the last 12 years, so it's just as we're seeing everywhere in government, the idea to do more with less."
One idea to share costs, is to combine fire chiefs. It's already being done.The Sterling interim chief is a deputy chief in Rock Falls. Both departments already train together. And the study recommends sharing equipment costs.
"You're looking at a piece of equipment that can go from 250, 500, to a million dollars," says Sterling Fire Captain Mike Dettman.
He says both departments need the basics, tanker trucks, and pumpers. But specialized equipment can be shared.
"They have a haz-mat trailer, there's no reason for us to have a haz-mat trailer, they just ordered a six by six for brush fires and to work different venues, we don't need a six by six."
The Sterling fire union is skeptical of the plan though.
"We don't see the consolidation as being viable," says Union secretary and treasurer Phil Johannsen.
He says the Sterling fire crews are already understaffed. And he says the shared chief is stretched thin.
"Most of our administrative staff also function as incident command on major incidents, so if there's only one deputy chief for both cities and he's tied up at an incident, his whole day is shot."
The cities would need to work out technical details before moving forward. But Mayor Lee says he's confident the shared idea will work.
"If my house is on fire I don't care if the truck is red, yellow, green, purple, or polka dot, I want the fire put out."
The fire study also recommends sharing paid on call personnel between the departments.
And encourages the ambulance service to be based out of the fire stations rather than the hospital which could shorten response times.
Rock Falls city leaders received copies of the studies tonight.
Neither city is ready to move forward until more discussions can be held.
