Whitesboro Fire Chief Jeff Patterson gave the city council an overview of the fire, ambulance and dispatch budgets and projects at the most recent meeting.
“For the most part, there’s not big line item increases that we are looking at,” Patterson said. He said two things that will be in the fire budget are state mandated health screenings for the firefighters and a comprehensive fire hydrant maintenance and testing program.
He said firefighters have been required to undergo physicals for some time, but a requirement passed last year adds cancer screenings to that requirement.
“Because the nature of the job that we do, the environment is high in carcinogens and firefighters suffer from a lot of cancers,” he explained before telling the council that his department looked at several different companies that provide those screenings.
“We found one that is local that will come to us that will do a lot of that testing in-house,” he said. That will cost the city $15,000. The physicals are included in that price and are required every year. The cancer screenings are broken out on a five-year plan with different screenings required each year. Patterson said the Whitesboro Fire Department had not done the physicals in the past because it was primarily a volunteer department. But in January of 2026, the department switched to paid firefighters.
Comprehensive Fire Hydrant Maintenance Program
Patterson said they will also use an outside company to start on the comprehensive fire hydrant maintenance program.
“We recently went through our ISO evaluation, and we learned that a lot of our hydrants are in poor shape. That is not anyone’s fault necessarily, just not enough hands to go around and that kind of stuff, and that’s some of the maintenance items that have fallen by the wayside,” he said.
He also said the company that he had worked with before in Addison is the one he is considering for the project.
“They come in and they will test all of the hydrants and maintain all of the hydrants and then paint all of the hydrants. The hydrants are supposed to be painted for what their flow is, so they measure the amount of water that comes out of the hydrant and then they paint the top of it based on recommendations,” he explained. The outside company will also take care of all of the record keeping that is required for that project to prove that those inspections and improvements have been made. He said using a third-party company to conduct this type of examination is not really any different than what the city already does with hoses and fire pumps on the trucks.
“The idea is this is a recurring program,” he said and noted that the city might eventually be able to do this in-house at some point in the future.
EMS Budget Considerations
Patterson said the goal for the EMS at this point is to maintain the current level of service.
“We currently staff two full-time MICU units and then we have a third unit that is certified and ready to go,” he said.
A study that they did recently in preparation for a grant proposal revealed that based on what the department brings in from subsidies and billing, they are able to cover 65 percent of both the fire and emergency services budgets. He said there is a small increase in vehicle maintenance in the budget. Patterson said that “some of that is due to the winter storm and that unit’s age.”
“This year we are in the final stages of approval to carry whole blood products,” Patterson said. He added that the
Whitesboro EMS will be the first entity to provide whole blood products. He said that program will be paid for by a grant.
Capital Purchase for EMS
Patterson said this covers all of the items that go in an ambulance. He explained that when the city orders an ambulance, it doesn’t order it fully stocked because there is such a big mark-up on those items. Instead, the city sources those items from vendors who have better prices so that the city gets the most for its money. The two ambulances were ordered in 2024 and are expected to arrive in 2027.
Grant Possibility to Pay for Additional Staff
Patterson said the city has applied for a grant to help pay for additional staff, but they won’t know if they got the grant until October. That would provide staffing for six additional firefighters or two per shift. He said currently the city has six firefighters per day. That includes two on the engine and two on each ambulance. The industry standard, he said, is four on the engine. If the city gets the grant, it will pay 75 percent of the salary and benefits for the new firefighters for the first two years and that amount will decrease over the next few years. That $109,000 for the first year, he said, is included in the proposed budget.
Dispatch Office Addition
“Basically, our goals for Communications is the addition of two new positions and the replacement of our radio program,” Patterson said. He said a new dispatch system was approved and ordered in October of 2025. A third dispatch desk was also approved then.
“In August of 2026 that new CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) will go live,” he said noting that is less than 30 days away for the crew in dispatch. He said the program is actually made specifically for Whitesboro and included a great deal of work by many people to get to this point.
The new staff members will give the city two dispatchers per shift 24/7.
“As you know they all went through emergency medical dispatch training this year,” Patterson said. “That training makes it where they can provide that service over the telephone without transferring it to Houston, Texas.”
However. he said, the dispatchers can’t provide that individualized care unless there are at least two dispatchers on duty -- one to handle the medical emergency conversation and one to continue to work incoming calls and dispatch duties.
New Radio System
The new 300 system will allow the city of Whitesboro to talk to other entities that use the 800 system.
“Our existing system has reached its end of life,” Patterson said, noting that the city has a hard time even finding parts to make repairs to the current system. He said that old system runs on copper while connections and the cost for that keeps getting more and more dear. What once cost $700 a month is now $7,000 a month. The new system will also increase coverage for the city’s communications.
“They also provide data over the air,” he said, “and it will allow dispatchers to actually see where a particular patrol vehicle is at any given time. All of the surrounding communities have the 800 systems. This will also provide new radios for all of the utilities in the city.”
He said the city can look at leasing the equipment and the first payment for that would not be due until 2027.