Fire Chief Kevin Tappe got past his first hurdle, the Fire Commission, in moving the department to eight-man minimum shift staffing.
A proposal to improve ambulance and fire truck response times — and make them more consistent — by increasing the minimum shift at the Fire Department from six to eight men on duty was supported last night by the Fire Commission, and the approximately $260,000-a-year program will now be factored into the Board of Selectmen’s budget deliberations.
Although the Fire Commission and the Board of Selectmen are the same five people performing different municipal functions, and the Fire Commission voted 4-to-0 Wednesday night, Feb. 17, to recommend the program, that doesn’t necessarily mean approval by the selectmen is a political slam dunk.
As members noted last night, the Fire Commission’s charge is to pursue the best operation of the Fire Department, and the Board of Selectmen’s charge is to oversee all town departments — including their budgets. Adding a $260,000-a-year Fire Department program to the town’s $34-million budget will involve balancing possible cuts to other departments’ budget requests, or higher taxes, or both — calculations that the Fire Commission isn’t charged with considering, but the selectmen will have to make.
Selectman Maureen Kozlark summed up the differing perspectives.
“Sitting here on the Fire Commission,” she said, “it makes sense for the Fire Commission to support it. I don’t know if the selectpeople will support it.
“You’ve presented a very strong case to support it,” she said to Fire Chief Kevin Tappe. “But it’s over a quarter of a million dollars a year.”
First Selectman Rudy Marconi did propose — and the Fire Commission supported — making the budget increase less dramatic by starting the program half way through the next fiscal year.
Working with the town finance and personnel departments, Chief Tappe calculated the program’s cost — driven mostly by increased overtime — as $262,000 in the first year, rising another $5,000 to $267,000 in the second year.
With the program starting half-way through the 2016-17 fiscal year — Jan. 1, 2017, rather July 1, 2016 at the fiscal year’s start — the first year cost would be about $131,000. And an increase of $136,000 would be needed in 2017-18 to get from there to the full second-year cost of $267,000.
Essentially, what the program will do is assure that there are always eight firefighters on duty to man two ambulances and two fire trucks — they’re required to have at least two go out on every mission. Currently, between vacations and sick-days, the eight-man shifts can fall to seven or six before people are called in on overtime. If a shift is below eight, and three vehicles are out, the fourth can’t respond to a call until someone gets back from a call or comes in from off-duty.
This results in sizable fluctuations in response time depending, essentially, on luck — how often calls come in when vehicles are out and shift is below full staffing.
“In order to provide more consistent service to the public, I believe they’d be better served by eight-man minimum staffing,” Chief Tappe told the Fire Commission Wednesday night.
The selectmen resume their budget deliberations in March.
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