This is a blog version of an earlier Facebook posting. 

Report from Wake County. On Monday, January 12, 2026, the Board of Commissioners of the Town of Wendell received a presentation from Wake County Fire and Emergency Management about the possibility of a merger of the private, non-profit organization Wendell Fire Department (WFD) with the town of Wendell.

Watch the presentation at, starting at the 22 minute mark: 

See presentation slides (PDF)

Here are some notes from the presentation, phraseology is all ours:

In 1998, the Wake County Fire Tax District was created. This was a single tax district for all unincorporated areas of Wake County, created for the purpose for funding fire services for those “rural” areas.

This change was recommended in a 1994 consultant’s study. At that time, there were 22 different fire tax districts, for funding the respective “rural” response districts.

In 1998, the town of Wendell asked to also be unincluded in the new Wake County Fire Tax District. They were the only municipality. This passed the burden of fire service taxation from the town to the county.

Today, the town contracts with WFD for service inside the town limits, with the county handling the taxation of residents. For those areas outside the town limits, but within the Wendell “rural” district, the county contracts with WFD.

WFD has 42 full-time employees supplemented with 18 part-time and volunteer members, with 60 total personnel. They have three stations, two of which are co-located with Wake County EMS. They had 2,878 incident responses/calls for service in calendar year 2024, of which 1,233 were within the town limits. They have an annual operating budget of $5.08M. See presentation for more details on the financials.

WFD is the last private fire department with a municipal response area. Garner and Rolesville both merged with their respective towns last year. Wake Forest merged with the town in 2020. Other towns and associated rural fire departments merged or were combined in prior decades.

Also, on another note, Wendell is one of only two municipalities, along with Rolesville, that doesn’t conduct their own fire inspection/code enforcement. The county performs and charges for those.

Why consider a “unification”? Reasons include (a.) town is one of the fastest growing municipalities in the state, (b.) town currently has no governing authority on how WFD operates or spends money, (c.) town is only municipality that doesn’t govern the fire services within their town limits, (d.) town has no authority on how their citizens are taxed for fire services, (e.) over the last four years, county fire services and town leaders have met annually for the last four years to talk on this topic, (f.) both the town and the fire department agree that timing is right to start this process.

What are the benefits? They include (a.) town residents could be asked, by way of voting, how large capital fire projects are funded, (b.) town would control how much residents are taxed for fire services, (c.) WFD administrative staff would see benefits of HR, financial, and payroll support from town, (d.) WFD employees would become members of the local government retirement system, (e.) WFD employees would receive a “bridge to Medicare” if they had 20 consecutive years employed with the town, and other benefits.

Next steps? If things move forward, a subsequent step would be county staff recommending that WFD hire a consulting firm–the same firm that has worked with others in Wake County, NC Fire Chief Consulting–to assist with the process. And with a proposed merger date of July 1, 2027.