A City Council-appointed task force recommended Stillwater separate its city ambulance service from the Fire Department and consider privatizing emergency and non-emergency medical services instead of hiring more firefighters.
Relieving firefighters of Emergency Medical Technician duties and creating rules regulating how the city pays them overtime would reduce the $460,000 in overtime paid each year, according to the task force report mailed to city residents.
Fire officials are criticizing the report, which some say is based on incorrect information.
“For them to say we are at adequate staffing is ludicrous at best,” said Dale Parrish, political action committee chairman of the Unified Firefighters of Stillwater.
Parrish’s committee based its proposal to hire 36 new fire and Emergency Medical Services personnel on a two-year staffing and deployment study by former Fire Chief Larry Mullikan in 2004.
These employees, hired over a four-year span, would end the practice of cross-staffing fire machinery and ambulances. Without this, residents must be “willing to accept the increasing risk of a delayed arrival of emergency crews,” according to Mullikan’s report.
The City Council created the Citizens Task Force on Fire and Ambulance Staffing in January to examine reported understaffing issues within the Fire Department. The task force’s goal was to analyze the issue and recommend a solution that would balance safety and public funds.
Hiring more employees could result in the highest sales tax in the state or an added $215 per year on utility bills, according to the May report. The Council will discuss the findings at its regular meeting at 5:30 tonight at the Stillwater Municipal Building.
Task force Chairwoman Melissa DeLacerda said the group gathered information about the Fire Department and statistics from communities similar to Stillwater.
“Firemen sit at the fire house and wait,” DeLacerda said. “Policemen are out driving and looking. It’s a hard question cause when there’s a disaster, you need them. That’s why you need to look at past statistics to determine the likelihood of that happening.”
The task force saw no changes in public safety with firefighters manning both EMS and fire services on the same shift, according to the task force report.
All 18 to 22 firefighters on a shift were rarely all out of their stations on calls at the same time, according to the report. If the emergency and non-emergency ambulance service was privatized or separated, current employees would be “more than sufficient” for the growth of the Stillwater area, it said.
Parrish was surprised by the task force’s findings.
“We appreciate all the time and effort they put into the committee,” he said. “Unfortunately, you can do a lot of work and come up with a plethora of results that are wrong.”
According to the National Fire Protection Association standards used in Mullikan’s report, having only 18 people on duty forces firefighters to cross-man equipment, making them less effective with their services.
For example, a “pumper” vehicle must be operated by five people to be fully effective. With 18 people on duty only three can tend to the pumper, leading to a 62 percent loss in efficiency, according to Mullikan’s report.
Cross-manning equipment has led to an increased amount of overtime for some firefighters: between $360,000 and $466,000 was spent in each of the past three years on overtime, according to the report. One employee nearly doubled his salary in 2007 because of overtime.
According to the report, the city has no regulations on overtime.
Overtime is voluntary and is implemented through a call-back system, which is “determined by a battalion commander and done on an ad hoc basis,” according to the task force report. When firefighters agree to go to work, they are paid time and a half from the time they leave their homes; however, many live as far away as Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Claremore.
The call-back system is used when the combined stations fall below the minimum of 18 employees needed on a shift, said David McGuire, local union representative for the International Association of Fire Fighters.
“With just one small house fire, the city remains almost uncovered by the Fire Department,” McGuire said. “It seems to me our guys are more responsible than they are making us out to be. We don’t abuse the system.”
According to the union contract for 2007 to 2009, two stand-by lists are used when “additional members are needed.” One list is for an entire shift of 24 hours and the other is a list used for circumstances less than 24 hours, such as an emergency.
For an average structure fire, the Fire Department has to call in six more employees because it needs to prepare for potential emergencies while regular firefighters out, said Marion Blackwell, Stillwater fire chief.
Blackwell said the Fire Department calls in extra employees during OSU football games and special events.
“In here, they’re saying there’s no rhyme or reason to it,” Blackwell said. “If we don’t call back and there’s an accident up town, there’s nobody to go to the accident and I’m crucified for not having enough staff.”
A firefighter’s medical duties could be filled by a licensed EMT making $20,000 to $35,000 per year instead of $64,000, according to the report.
A subsidy from the city to privatize or turn ambulance services over to the hospital is a possibility, according to the report.
DeLacerda said no recommendation was made about how separate ambulance services would be paid for under the city.
Parrish said he has looked into the option of privatizing ambulance services, and found that subsidies tend to increase over time.
“Some other towns that were privatized have actually begun to come back into the fire department,” he said.
DeLacerda said money not spent on overtime could be used toward the separation of the EMS and Fire Department.
“It’s a reallocation of the city budget,” she said. “If you didn’t spend $466,000 on overtime, you might have $466,000 to spend.”
Plans to receive funds to pay for extra personnel were examined in the report, such as a SAFER grant, an election to form a 522 ambulance district and an OG&E franchise tax. All were deemed impractical.
The task force also investigated an agreement between OSU and the city on fire and emergency services. Fifteen percent of fire calls in the past three years have been from the OSU campus, yet the university does not provide any funding for fire services. The task force suggested minimizing the number of unnecessary calls from OSU, receiving state assistance for the university’s protection and creating a student fee to support fire and emergency services.
Blackwell said he has felt the strain caused by many of these issues and is ready for a resolution.
“Something has got to occur,” he said.
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