ZELIENOPLE — The Harmony and Zelienople volunteer fire departments voted Monday to combine their departments.

The new department will be called the Harmony Fire District and will be identified as Station No. 22.

A task force assembled in November to consider the merger will work out the logistics of actually merging, said Scott Garing, Zelienople assistant chief.

The plan is to have the new department start operations on Jan. 1, 2016. It will serve Harmony, Zelienople, Jackson Township and Lancaster Township.

The vote Monday was not unanimous, but there was plenty of enthusiasm, Garing said.

He said, “We got such an overwhelming ‘yes’ from both departments. It was a tremendous feeling based on all the work we’ve been put into it so far, it’s finally coming to fruition.”

The group originally wanted to be called the Heritage Volunteer Fire Company, but its lawyer advised taking a name that indicated its origin, Garing said.

The companies then reached a compromise to keep the Harmony name and the Zelienople station number.

The merger is intended to allow the new company to better serve the area by combining the departments’ resources and manpower. Everything will be combined and the new membership will elect new officers before Jan. 1.

The Harmony department, which was founded in 1874, has about 60 members, said Chief Neal Nanna.

The need for volunteers was one of the biggest reasons for the merger, Nanna said.

“It’s kind of a recruitment and retention thing. Everybody is hurting on manpower. Once people see that this works and we’ll be the leader, maybe more will want to join in,” he said.

The Zelienople department was founded in 1850 and has about 40 members. Garing said he joined in 1999, when the department had a maximum of 50 active members and a waiting list to join.

Though it has not been specifically discussed, Garing said he anticipates the auxiliaries of the two departments and the Zelienople Fire Police will be included in the new department.

The Zelienople department will be absorbed into the Harmony department, meaning it will not need to establish a new legal 501c3 organization, but only do a name change.

A subcommittee will work with the four municipalities to figure out the finances and taxes for the new entity.

The Harmony department typically has an annual budget of about $170,000, though it can fluctuate, Nanna said.

For the 2013-14 fiscal year, the department spent about $350,000 with the additional expenses coming for new equipment and a payment on a new truck, he said.

The Zelienople department has an annual operating budget of about $140,000, Garing said.

The two departments also plan to be united under one roof.

The Zelienople station is on West Beaver Street in Zelienople, and Harmony has a station on Main Street in Harmony and a substation on Route 19 in Lancaster Township.

Garing said the tentative plan is to keep the Lancaster Township station open and consolidate into one of the other two buildings in the short term. The long-term plan is to build a new station, he said.

Equipment will be combined and new bylaws and standard operating guidelines established.

The task force includes representatives of both fire departments as well as representatives of the municipalities they serve.

Jay Grinnell, director of Harmony EMS, was recruited as an unbiased chairman for the committee. He will be a liaison between the group and the state Department of Community and Economic Development, which offers grants and assistance to departments wanting to merge.

This is the third merger of fire departments in recent years in Butler County.

In 2014, three volunteer companies in Butler Township merged to become the Butler Township Fire District.

In 2007 the Mars and Valencia volunteer departments merged to become the Adams Area Fire District.