Warren Firefighter Shortage

[doomonyou]

So what happens in 2 years when the cash runs out? Will Warren be able to keep these guys, is this the idea behind EMS? My dept got rid of EMS back in 86 or 87, I think with the way the economy has been wishes they still had.

We have been re lucky though, no station closures, man power cuts, just some vacant spots not being filled. Heck we just took delivery of 2 engines and ladder.

[YARBFD10]

New firefighters in Warren must have paramedic training
Story published October 7, 2010 By Ed Runyan in the Youngstown Vindicator.
Nussle said the department is requiring paramedic certification for the 13 new hires for two reasons. One is so that the department can return to providing emergency medical (ambulance) service to the city. Roughly 90 percent of fire departments across the country provide some level of emergency medical service, Nussle said.

Having paramedics in the department will improve the odds of having a way to keep them after the two years, Nussle said. Providing EMS to the city won’t cost citizens any additional money because ambulance runs won’t be charged to the resident, only to their insurance or Medicare, he added.

 

Hey Steve, you believe it now???

[wfd44]

no
politics political machines and corruption are rampant and i do not believe it cuz words mean nothing action does when it happens lets talk till then dont count ur chickens b4 they hatch or u mite lay an egg

[yfdgricker]

Fire budget raises alarms
Story posted December 29, 2010 by MARLY KOSINSKI in the Tribune Chronicle

WARREN - Despite passing a 2011 city budget of $70.6 million last week, several council members said they have concerns about adding more than a dozen firefighters to the payroll without a clear plan on how to pay for them after a federal grant expires.

In September, the city received a $4.9 million Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant that was used to recall 10 firefighters laid off Jan. 1, 2009, and hire an additional 14 firefighters who are expected to be on the payroll in April. The grant pays for salaries, benefits, training and equipment for the recalled workers and new hires for two years.

Councilman John Brown, D-3rd Ward, voted against passing the 2011 budget at the Dec. 22 City Council meeting. City spending surpassed income by nearly $2 million in 2007, by more than $500,000 in 2009 and nearly $100,000 so far this year, he said.

"How will these firefighters be paid for in the third year when we are relying on a grant to hire them in the first place?" Brown said.

Sixth Ward Councilwoman Cheryl Saffold also voted against the passing budget because of concerns over the S.A.F.E.R. grant. She asked if the grant required firefighters to be paramedic-certified and Human Resources Director Gary Cicero told her it did not.

"Then why did we require applicants who took the test on Saturday (Dec. 18) to be certified?" Saffold asked.

Michele Scala, Civil Service Commission clerk, said applicants did not have to have their paramedic certification to take the test, but they must have it at the time of their appointment.

Auditor David Griffing said previously he does not expect the new hires to be on the budget until after April because of background checks and physical agility tests.

Scala said 67 people applied for the firefighter positions, with 62, including one woman, taking the test on Dec. 18. She said 99 people took the test three years ago, but she would not speculate on whether the paramedic certification played a role in the decline this time around.

Fire Chief Ken Nussle said the firefighters union and Civil Service Commission decided to require paramedic certification to provide a better trained department. Eventually, the fire department would like to move toward providing an ambulance service for residents, he said.

"One of the questions on the grant application was how the city would generate income to sustain the personnel hired with the grant money. Providing emergency medical services could be a way to do that, but it was not a requirement for us getting the grant," Nussle said.

Councilman Al Novak, D-2nd Ward, said he plans to hold Finance Committee meetings after Jan. 1 to continue discussing the fire department staffing issue as well as other budget matters, which is why he agreed to pass the budget.

"This grant scares the hell out of me because we will be taking on so many more people and we still don't have union contracts with the existing personnel," Novak said.

Councilwoman Helen Rucker, D-at large, said she voted to accept the budget because she knew it needed to pass, but had some reservations about the fire grant.

"You're asking me to accept the responsibility of bringing firefighters back, but there is no clear plan by this administration on how to keep them," she said.

Mayor Michael O'Brien said the administration would not have accepted the grant unless it knew the positions could be sustained. The administration is hoping the economy continues to improve, which will boost income tax revenues, he said.

mkosinski@tribtoday.com

[yfdgricker]

Chief: Hiring 14 firefighters good idea
Story by Ed Runyan (runyan@vindy.com) Published in the Youngstown Vindicator on January 6, 2011

WARREN

Forty-seven people passed the civil-service test given Dec. 18 at Harding High School to qualify for one of the 14 firefighter jobs Fire Chief Ken Nussle hopes to fill with money from a $5 million federal grant, but first he must convince Warren City Council that hiring them is a good idea.

Michelle Scala, clerk of the Warren Civil Service Commission, said Wednesday that 47 of the 62 people who took the test passed it. The exam tests general knowledge and doesn’t require firefighting knowledge, but being hired to one of the jobs requires a candidate to have emergency-medical-technician training by the time of hiring.

At 5 p.m. today, Nussle will discuss the grant with members of council’s Police and Fire Committee. Some council members have voiced concerns regarding the cost to the city to keep the firefighters after the two-year grant runs out or to pay for unemployment benefits if they are laid off.

Nussle said there is no obligation to keep the firefighters after the two years expire, but he admits he doesn’t know where the money will come from to pay unemployment benefits.

“But we have no intention of laying them off,” Nussle said. “Our goal is to use EMS to retain the firefighters.”

Nussle said 90 percent of fire departments across the country provide some level of emergency medical service. Warren does not, relying instead on private ambulance companies.

Warren did provide EMS services many years ago but did not transport patients at that time, which meant the city didn’t have a good source of revenue to pay for EMS services. The transport part of EMS is what makes the money, Nussle said.

Nussle said hiring 14 more firefighters with the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant it received last year will be a first step toward restoring EMS service.

That’s important, Nussle said, because people expect firefighters who arrive for an emergency to do something to help the wounded.

Currently, fewer than 10 percent of his firefighters have EMS training, so there’s little they can do.

The department used the SAFER grant already to rehire 10 laid-off firefighters in late September-early October, bringing staffing to 60.

If the department hires 14 more firefighters this year, it would have 74 — three more than it had when the city laid off 11 firefighters and left four vacancies unfilled Jan. 1, 2009.

David Griffing, Warren auditor, said the 11 firefighters laid off in 2009 cost the city $114,359 in unemployment benefits, or $10,396 each.

Scala said two of the 62 people who took the test were black males, and one of them was a female. She said she doesn’t know how many of them passed the test.

The department has never had a female firefighter, and the last minority hired into the department was in 1992.

[yfdgricker]

Warren fire station to reopen
January 27, 2011 - By MARLY KOSINSKI Tribune Chronicle

WARREN - The city will open one of its two satellite fire stations today for the first time in two years thanks to a $4.9 million federal grant that allowed for the recall of 10 laid-off firefighters.

Station No. 6 on Parkman Road will be open today because there are 14 firefighters on duty - 11 for the central station downtown and three for the secondary station, according to firefighters union president Marc Titus. He said the station will be closed Friday because the staffing level will be at 13 due to vacations, personal days and other scheduled days off, but he expects it to reopen Saturday.

Titus said 11 firefighters are needed to man the downtown station, 14 are needed to open one secondary station and 17 are needed to have all three stations open. He said the Atlantic Street station cannot open until the engine truck housed there gets its ruptured water tank repaired.

Titus said he would have preferred waiting until the No. 5 Atlantic Street station could be open before opening the Parkman Road station, because it appears to residents that the city is favoring one side of town over the other.

"It's safer for us to all respond from the downtown station even if we have enough manpower to open one of the secondary stations because it's like rolling the dice opening one and not the other," Titus said prior to Wednesday's City Council meeting.

He said if there are three firefighters at the Parkman Road station and there is a fire in the northeast quadrant, the 11 firefighters at the main station will respond first and there will be a lag time for the three men at Parkman Road, which could put firefighters in danger.

Safety-Service Director Doug Franklin said he spoke to Fire Chief Ken Nussle Wednesday afternoon and Nussle indicated he wanted to open the Parkman Road station because he thinks there is less coverage on the south and west sides of the city from the central station. Nussle was not at Wednesday's meeting.

Franklin said the city's goal is to have all three stations open permanently.

Councilman John Brown, D-3rd Ward, said he reviewed personnel sheets from a 100-day period since the 10 firefighters were recalled in October and the reports show there have been enough firefighters on duty 80 percent of the time to open at least one outside station, and there have been several instances when there was enough manpower to open both.

"In 2007, Warren residents made an income tax for safety forces permanent and they were promised the outlying stations would be open on at least a rotating basis. We have not kept that promise and I hope that changes with the additional manpower," Brown said.

He was referring to 14 additional firefighters who will be on the payroll by April using money from the $4.9 million Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (S.A.F.E.R.) grant received by the city last year.

The additional hires will bring the total number of firefighters to 74. Titus said the 10 recalled personnel brought the number to 60, which is where the roster stood after layoffs Jan. 1, 2009. He said in addition to the layoffs, the department lost an additional 10 men in 2009 and 2010 through retirements that were not replaced.

"Once we get to 74, we will have enough manpower to staff all three stations on a regular basis," Titus said.

Franklin said Station No. 6 has some structural issues with the floor, but some equipment was moved around to lessen the weight load there so the Parkman Road station can be used. Titus said the roof at Station No. 5 needs to be replaced, but several leaks have been repaired enough to make it useable.

mkosinski@tribtoday.com

[yfdgricker]

Reopening of Warren fire station sparks optimism
Published: 1/28/2011 By ED RUNYAN (runyan@vindy.com) in the Youngstown Vindicator

WARREN - With Thursday’s reopening of the Parkman Road Northwest fire station, the city has a second operational station for the first time since April 2009.

The Parkman Road station won’t operate quite the way it did in 2009 and won’t be open every day of the week, but having a second station could

reduce response times to some calls on the west side, Fire Chief Ken Nussle said.

The station is across from the Trumbull Plaza, about four minutes from the main fire station on South Street downtown.

The fire engine at the Parkman Road Station probably will get to fires first on 15 percent to 20 percent of all emergency calls, Nussle said, and could shave minutes off of response times.

To reopen the Parkman Road station now, Nussle had to “compromise” on a guideline that each firetruck should have four firefighters on board, he said. Trucks at Parkman Road sometimes will have only three.

Joe Vescera, owner of Sorrento’s Restaurant, just north of the Parkman Road station, said he’s pleased the station is back open.

“We’re fortunate to have it only two doors away. They can get here much faster than if they had to come from downtown Warren,” he said.

He added that the future of the city depends on people’s having confidence in the schools, police department and fire department.

“They’re the reasons people come to a city,” he said.

Because engineering consultants A.C. Charnas & Associates of Warren indicated in 2009 that the Parkman Road station’s main floor area wasn’t strong enough to support the weight of 63,000-pound ladder truck, Nussle has moved an engine truck there that is about half the weight.

The station will house three firefighters 24 hours a day on the days when there are enough firefighters to man the station. That will happen about 70 percent of the time, Nussle said.

Any time there are 14 firefighters working on a shift, there will be enough to open two fire stations. When there are at least 17 per shift, the station on Atlantic Street Northeast will open, Nussle said.

The department has 61 firefighters now, including the chief. That works out to 19 firefighters plus one inspector on each shift, but there are up to five people off per shift for vacations and other reasons.

The 15 firefighters to be hired in waves over the next two months with the money being received from a $5 million, two-year federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant will give the department 75 firefighters, or 19 to 24 per shift.

[yfdgricker]

Warren applied for second S.A.F.E.R. grant
January 28, 2011 - By MARLY KOSINSKI Tribune Chronicle

WARREN - Just weeks before the city learned it was receiving a $4.9 million federal grant to recall and hire firefighters, a nearly identical application was submitted for the following year.

During a police and fire committee meeting Thursday, fire Chief Ken Nussle said the fire department had not yet been awarded the 2009 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (S.A.F.E.R.) grant when it applied for the 2010 S.A.F.E.R. grant.

Nussle said a representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency told him that if Warren wins a second grant, it cannot be used for anything except personnel and it cannot be used to extend the life of the 2009 grant, which expires in two years.

Safety-Service Director Doug Franklin said the city only applied for the 2010 grant as an "insurance policy" in case its 2009 application was rejected. The deadline to apply for the 2010 grant was approaching and there was no indication Warren received the 2009 grant, so an application was submitted.

Councilman Eddie Colbert, D-7th Ward and committee chair, questioned whether the city would accept a second grant if awarded since their staffing level will be at 75 once an additional 14 firefighters are on board. The city already has recalled 10 firefighters who were laid off using the S.A.F.E.R. grant.

However, International Association of Firefighters Local 204 president Marc Titus pointed out that the fire department's authorized strength - which is set by City Council - is 84. If the city accepted the 2010 grant, it would be required to retain any new firefighters hired with the money for one year after the two-year grant expires.

"The 2009 grant did not have any strings attached because we were bringing the staffing level back up to where it was before layoffs and retirements,'' Titus said. ''Under the grant guidelines, any firefighters beyond 75 are considered new hires instead of rehires and the city would have to keep them the third year.''

It is unknown how likely it is the city could receive a second grant amount of $5 million.

mkosinski@tribtoday.com