In 2006, the Fire District entered into an Automatic Aid Agreement with the City of Richmond. The agreement ensures that the closest fire engine will be dispatched in order to increase citizen and firefighter safety regardless of the jurisdiction or geo-political boundaries. The agreement stipulates that at the end of each year, Richmond and the District will compare the total responses for each department. The agency with the greater number of calls will be compensated using the following methodology, i.e., hourly crew rate, hourly apparatus rate, administrative overhead rate, and cost for radio system utilization per incident. In 2009-2010, Richmond responded to 1,496 calls within the County and the District responded to 703 calls within Richmond. This resulted in a charge of $354,431 for services. This is the only mutual or automatic aid agreement that the District participates in where charges are incurred. The District is attempting to renegotiate the fees for the automatic aid agreement and has proposed a number of options to Richmond for consideration, i.e., elimination of the payments, use of in-kind services, equalizing the fee, etc.