FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) – After nearly 25 years operating under the Broward Sheriff\u2019s Office, Broward County commissioners are considering bringing the county\u2019s fire rescue department under direct county control.<\/p>\n
During a meeting on Thursday, commissioners voted to place the issue on the agenda for their Sept. 22 meeting, where they could begin discussions on possibly transitioning fire rescue away from BSO.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to move to direct the county administrator to place an item on the September 22nd board agenda,\u201d said Commissioner Lamar Fisher. <\/p>\n
If the board moves forward with the process, it could change who oversees fire rescue services across the county.<\/p>\n
\u201cBroward County now has the opportunity to control its own fire department and its costs,\u201d said Fisher.<\/p>\n
BSO has been responsible for fire rescue since 2003 under an agreement with the county. That agreement has been automatically renewed every five years. The next renewal is set for Sept. 2028.<\/p>\n
If commissioners ultimately decide to take control of fire rescue, the county would have to provide BSO with at least a year\u2019s advance notice.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing against the sheriff, but we have to look at taxpayers\u2019 money, so we provide the same level of service, and hopefully it costs a little bit less, but we can control that. Right now we don\u2019t control that cost,\u201d said Fisher.<\/p>\n
Fisher believes the transition could be relatively straightforward if approved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s 907 employees in the fire rescue service, so all we\u2019re doing is bringing them over to Broward. Nobody loses their job. The cities have municipality contracts with fire rescue. We will honor those contracts,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The commissioner said residents would likely notice little difference in the day-to-day service.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public won\u2019t even know a difference other than the patch on the arm will say Broward County versus Broward Sheriff\u2019s Office,\u201d said Fisher. <\/p>\n
But other commissioners said they want more information before deciding whether to move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cInterested to hear the discussion. I hear from many of the municipalities that this is a direction that they would like to go so we certainly should investigate it,\u201d said Commissioner Nan H. Rich<\/p>\n
\u201cI would certainly like more data, I\u2019m sure as we get into discussion, we\u2019ll get data, historically why it was given over to BSO in the first place,\u201d said Commissioner Alexandra P. Davis. <\/p>\n
The board decided to provide 30 days before the September meeting to give commissioners enough time to review the proposal and determine where they stand on the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 30-day window will give time for every commissioner to understand it and then make the decision on the 22nd whether we want to move forward with that notification,\u201d said Fisher.<\/p>\n
The possible change comes as several departments have previously examined ways to separate from BSO, particularly on the law enforcement side. After Thursday\u2019s meeting, fire rescue could be next.<\/p>\n
The possible change comes as several departments<\/a> have previously examined ways to separate from BSO<\/a>, particularly on the law enforcement side. After Thursday\u2019s meeting, it appears that fire rescue could be next. <\/p>\n As of Thursday night, BSO had not responded to 7News\u2019 request for comment.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n \tJoin our Newsletter for the latest news right to your inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) – After nearly 25 years operating under the Broward Sheriff\u2019s Office, Broward County commissioners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-377136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}