[SUNNYMARYANN]

I would like to know about the Police and Fire protection services in The Villages. Does each Village have its own Fire Station? Where are the fire and police stations located?

[Bryan]

Politics! You have to remember that The Villages government (the CDD's or Community Development Districts) are not given police powers under Florida law. Therefore all police protection comes from local agencies. In TV, that comes to four or five different agencies. Each county that has "a piece" of TV. Lake, Marion and Sumter Counties have a Sheriff's Department that patrols their portions of TV. All three also have a district substation located within TV. Most of TV that is in Lake County is also in the town of Lady Lake, which has it's own police department. The Lady Lake Police Station is on 441 just south of TV. You will often see Lady Lake PD officers at Spanish Springs and directing "church" traffic around churches in the Lady Lake portion of TV. And, of course, we are in Florida so the Florida Highway Patrol is seen in the area, especially on main highways, on occassion.

As for fire protection, TV does have it's own Pulbic Safety Department which includes fire and EMS and Community Watch and maybe a few other things. It is a superb fire department but, due to population density, does not have a station in each village (nor would one be needed). In addition, our public safety department has mutual aid agreements that work very well with all surrounding fire departments. For EMS, our public safety department (fire dept) provides paramedics/firefighters and First Response vehicles but does not provide patient transport (ambulance) service. Depending on your county, patient transport is provided by Lake/Sumter EMS or Marion County Fire. Ambulances are co-located within TV at various fire stations for quick response and they generally arrive with, or very shortly after, the First Response EMS truck from Public Safety arrives.

Both our Public Safety Department and the Lake/Sumter EMS Service has won several nationally recognized awards for their staffing, response times, training, dispatch, equipment, etc.

Overall, I would say you will find our police, fire and EMS porotection are well above average anywhere and everywhere within TV. We are a relatively low crime (that does not mean 'crime free' though) area so you may find police visability (except on main roads and for traffic enforcement) lower than you are used to. The squeaking wheel gets the oil so the cops tend to go where the crime is, and that is generally not in TV.

[Ooper]

There are currently 5 fire stations but you'll find most of your questions answered in the following link...

http://www.districtgov.org/vccdd/publicsafety/index.asp

[Hawkwind]

If I remember correctly from when I went to the CDD meeting the average reaponse time is 4 minutes for all EMS calls.

[SUNNYMARYANN]

That was a very informative website and the slide show of equipment was nice. Thanks to you all for answering my questions so completely.