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Feasibility & Transition Studies
Whether to form, consolidate, contract, or in-source a public safety agency, answered with verified costs and a twenty-year horizon.
The Most Consequential Question a Council Asks
Should we start our own police department, or keep contracting with the county? Should these two departments merge? Should the city take fire service back in-house? Should we form a consolidated dispatch center? These decisions are irreversible in practice, they carry consequences measured in decades, and they are almost always politically charged before the first number is produced.
A feasibility study exists to take the argument beyond assertion. We build the full financial and operational picture of every option under consideration: startup capital, annual operating cost, staffing, facility requirements, technology, implementation timeline, and risk. Each option is then projected forward far enough that the compounding differences become visible.
Contracted service Independent department
Questions we are retained to answer
Where Feasibility Analysis Applies
Forming an Independent Department
A jurisdiction currently served under contract by a county sheriff’s office or a neighboring city evaluates standing up its own agency, examining the full cost of doing so, the staffing and facility required, and the realistic implementation window.
Contracting Out an Existing Department
The reverse question, examined with the same rigor: what a contract for service would actually cost over time, what control the jurisdiction retains, and what happens to existing personnel, equipment, and facilities.
Consolidation and Merger
Two or more agencies evaluate combining operations, dispatch, administration, or specialized functions, with the operational, financial, governance, and labor implications quantified for each participating jurisdiction.
Service Model Change
Moving fire-based EMS in or out of a department, establishing a consolidated PSAP, creating a regional training facility, or restructuring how a specialized function is delivered across multiple agencies.
What the analysis contains
Built to Survive Scrutiny From Every Direction
A feasibility finding will be examined by supporters, opponents, the incumbent provider, the affected workforce, and the press. Every component is sourced.
Baseline of the Current Model
Complete cost of the status quo, including the elements that never appear in the contract line: administrative support absorbed elsewhere in the budget, facility and infrastructure costs, and transfers and overhead. Historical escalation is established from multiple years of actual figures rather than from the current year alone.
Operational and Staffing Model
A complete organizational design for the alternative: every position, division, shift structure, minimum staffing level, and supervisory ratio, with patrol strength derived from workload rather than copied from the incumbent’s deployment.
Startup Capital, From Verified Quotations
Vehicles, technology, radio and communications, weapons and equipment, uniforms, and facility work, priced from current supplier quotations and cooperative purchasing contracts, with each item verified for currency, specification match, and pricing basis rather than estimated from rules of thumb.
Fully Loaded Operating Cost
Personnel modeled at true total cost including retirement, insurance, payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, training, equipment, vehicle assignment, and the backfill required to cover leave. A comparison against an all-inclusive contract price is invalid unless the alternative is priced the same way.
Long-Horizon Projection and Sensitivity
Both models projected across a twenty-year horizon to capture full capital lifecycles and the compounding effect of differential escalation. Sensitivity analysis tests the conclusion across the plausible range of every driving assumption, and break-even analysis identifies the precise point at which the finding would reverse.
Implementation Plan and Risk Register
A critical path with durations, dependencies, and float; a phased funding schedule by fiscal year; and a risk register scoring each identified risk on likelihood and impact with an explicit mitigation strategy. Recruitment shortfall, technology delay, and transition continuity are addressed directly rather than assumed away.
A note on independence
These Studies Are Political. The Analysis Should Not Be.
A feasibility study is commissioned in an environment where people already hold strong views, and where an incumbent provider, a union, or an elected champion has a stake in the outcome. We handle that by making the study auditable rather than persuasive. Assumptions are stated and sourced. Ranges are given instead of false precision. Where the evidence is equivocal, the report says so.
We also do not treat the incumbent as an adversary. Where a transition is contemplated, cooperative engagement with the current provider on knowledge transfer and parallel operations is normally in everyone’s interest, and we plan for it explicitly.
Common questions
Questions We Are Asked About Feasibility Studies
Should our city start its own police department or keep contracting with the county?
That is exactly the question a feasibility study is built to answer, and it cannot be answered from a first-year cost comparison. We build the full financial and operational picture of each option, including startup capital, annual operating cost, staffing, facility requirements, technology, implementation timeline, and risk, and then project each option far enough forward that the compounding differences become visible.
What is a feasibility study?
A feasibility study evaluates a structural change to how public safety services are delivered, such as forming an independent department, contracting an existing one out, consolidating two agencies, merging dispatch centers, or moving a service in or out of a department. Every option under consideration is costed and modeled on the same basis, so the governing body is comparing like with like rather than comparing a proposal against a memory.
Why does the twenty-year horizon matter so much?
Contract-versus-in-house questions turn on escalation rates, and two options that appear identical in year one can diverge dramatically by year twenty. A difference of two percentage points in annual escalation, compounded across two decades, dwarfs any first-year comparison. Decisions of this kind are irreversible in practice, so they deserve to be evaluated across the period they will actually govern.
Do you arrive with a preferred answer?
No. The analysis produces the finding and the governing body makes the decision. These questions are usually politically charged before the first number is produced, and a study that appears to have started from a conclusion is worth nothing to the council that has to defend the outcome.
Can a feasibility study recommend against the change?
It happens frequently. A study may find that forming an independent department is affordable but that the jurisdiction lacks the administrative capacity to sustain it, or that a proposed consolidation produces savings too small to justify the disruption. Recommending against a change is as legitimate a finding as recommending for it, and it has saved clients from expensive mistakes.
Start the conversation
Tell Us What Your Agency Is Facing.
Most agencies call us about a budget request, a growth pressure, or the start of a facility project. A short conversation is usually enough to tell you whether a study is the right next step, and what it would involve.