The Marin County Sheriff’s Office is severing a long partnership with fire agencies around the county by ending its fire dispatching operations.

In a Sept. 30 letter to fire chiefs, Sheriff Jamie Scardina wrote that offering fire dispatching “is no longer feasible” and that it would end June 30, a move that is anticipated to shift millions of dollars’ worth of operating costs away from the sheriff’s office.

Scardina said the possibility of dropping fire dispatching operations has come up within the sheriff’s department “for years.”

“We just felt this was the time to take care of our own staff who’ve been working mandatory overtime for years, and to say this is an opportunity for the fire chiefs to take over their own dispatch,” Scardina said.

The fire departments in turn will each take on tens of thousands of dollars worth of projected expenses, depending on the department.

Scardina confirmed his agency will not eliminate dispatcher positions once the new arrangement takes effect.

The communications division at the sheriff’s office provides dispatching for the Central Marin, Ross Valley and San Rafael fire departments and the Kentfield, Novato, Southern Marin and Tiburon fire protection districts, as well as five police departments, according to the agency’s website.

Some fire chiefs have said the nine-month transition is unrealistic, and Scardina has vowed to cooperate with the departments as they switch to a new system.

Since the announcement, fire chiefs have kicked around two possible dispatching models. Either one would cost each fire department more than it is paying the sheriff’s office.

One proposal, a joint powers authority, would increase costs by roughly one-third, according to a feasibility study by Virginia-based Federal Engineering.

The other model, under which fire agencies contract with the Marin County Fire Department for fire and medical dispatch, would raise costs to each agency between 42% and 45% — or, for the county fire department itself, 76%, according to the study.

The chiefs say the projected cost hikes are significant, but not insurmountable.

“We’ll have to make some modifications internally in our budgeting to accommodate that increase,” said Southern Marin Fire District Chief Chris Tubbs.

The Southern Marin district is facing a projected increase of $99,600 or $129,554, depending on which model the departments end up choosing, Tubbs said. Its annual budget is approximately $20 million. Tubbs said the district might delay or scale back capital projects to free up the money.

“We will find a way to make this cost difference within our existing revenues,” Tubbs said.

The sheriff’s office is subsidizing the fire agencies around $350,000 annually in staffing costs alone under the current arrangement, said sheriff’s Capt. Scott Harrington. Until 2021, the sheriff’s office was also directly covering the costs of two of the 12 dispatchers necessary to meet staffing needs. The sheriff’s office also covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in tech upgrades and recruitment costs, Harrington said.

Fire officials in San Rafael also considered the possibility of going out on their own for dispatch, but “our hope and our goal is to have everyone operating under the same dispatch center if possible,” said San Rafael Fire Department Chief Darin White.

Breaking from the sheriff’s office will allow the fire agencies to tweak their dispatch operations in ways they could not before, like having fire supervisors act as command and control within a dispatch center. That brings extra know-how “when you have a fast-moving incident or an unusual incident,” White said.

Enhancements like command and control “can be handled under a fire model better than a split model of police and fire,” said Novato Fire District Chief Bill Tyler. An all-fire dispatch system might also be able to better respond to emergencies like fast-moving wildfires, he said.

The time frame, however, gave him some pause.

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“In a practical sense, it’s impossible for us to meet that deadline, even though the fire chiefs had already been looking at certain models,” Tyler said. But he added that Scardina’s office has agreed to accommodate the fire departments if they need some more time.

“I totally understand that it’s going to take time,” Scardina said. “I know our contract ends June 30 but we’re going to work with the chiefs, we’re going to be good partners with them.”