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Could that really be the end?

Could the fire district consolidation debate that has fostered ill will for two decades and cost people jobs be resolved almost as an afterthought?

Probably not.

At the end of Friday's county budget workshop, Collier County Commissioner Fred Coyle brought up the idea of handing over the county's Emergency Medical Services operation to a unified fire department independent of county government. He received quick and painless agreement from his colleagues in spite of the tortured history of consolidation.

The non-debate was in marked contrast to previous attempts at folding the seven fire departments that serve the unincorporated county into one.

Coyle tried to grease the skids toward consolidation by taking away one past point of contention right away. "(The fire districts) are suspicious that we want to take it over. I don't want to take it over," Coyle said Friday. On Monday, he elaborated, "The last thing (commissioners) need is another thing to supervise." He also made clear that EMS would fall under the new fire department's purview, another old sticking point.

But a unified County Commission and a couple of nice carrots aren't necessarily enough to make consolidation happen.

Some of the same obstacles that have always prevented consolidation still exist.

Five of the seven fire departments — East Naples, Golden Gate, North Naples, Immokalee and Big Corkscrew — have elected fire boards. Consolidation would put most, if not all, of those board members out of office.

The departments also have chiefs and assistant chiefs who would stand to be knocked down a peg or two with only one chief countywide. And the firefighters in each department are represented by unions that may not see any advantage to dealing with one central administration. Also, people don't perceive the present system as broken and generally resist change.

To Coyle, the plusses of consolidation are obvious. Eliminating fire commissioners, who receive benefits such as free health insurance, could save millions of dollars over time, he said. Fire departments hire away county EMS workers and even other departments' staff, something a unified district could avoid. "That kind of competition just doesn't make sense," Coyle said.

If consolidation is deemed unworthy Coyle says, only half facetiously, he will suggest the Sheriff's Office split into seven different law enforcement agencies to realize the benefits of fragmentation.

Tom Cannon, chairman of the East Naples Fire Commission, says conditions for a merger are more favorable than in the past.

"I've always said when the urban areas get most of their (fire) infrastructure in place, it's time." East Naples, North Naples and Golden Gate have grown into one urban area, Cannon noted, warranting another look at the issue.

Even before Coyle's Friday remarks, Cannon said the fire districts had started an exploratory committee to re-analyze the questions surrounding consolidation. Cannon hopes the group, made up of fire commissioners, chiefs and firefighters, can hold its first meeting in July.

Cannon said there's no timetable set for the exploratory committee to finish its work.

Coyle stresses that he doesn't want to be seen as forcing anything on the fire districts. But if the districts can't come to some kind of consensus about consolidating, then he would favor putting the matter up for a public vote.

"(Fragmentation) just doesn't make sense. (The fire departments) need to look at the benefits to the whole county," Coyle said.

Cannon, who has been party to the consolidation wars for the past 20 years, remains wary of any county initiative on the matter. "You don't need a straw poll. It's got to be the professionals who put it in place," Cannon said.

Government observer extraordinaire Chuck Mohlke chaired a study group formed in 1988 to look into consolidation. Nothing came of almost three years of work, in part because of the complexity of the issue, he said.

Different accounting systems and nomenclature between departments at times made even talking about consolidation difficult, he recalled. "If you don't have common definitions you can get bogged down. And some people who don't want anything to happen will bog you down."

The end is a long ways off.