Sunday, October 20, 2002
City size, calls for service, response time and budgeting all are factors.
YOUNGSTOWN -- At first thought, it makes some sense that a slimmed down population means city services should downsize accordingly.
So, why shouldn't police and fire -- by far the city's most costly departments -- be scaled back instead of kept at previous levels via the proposed new half-percent income tax?
Because determining the right size for such services is not nearly that easy, say the city's police and fire chiefs.
A myriad of factors go into deciding how many police officers and firefighters a city needs, they say.
Population is one. But a city's geographical size, the number and types of calls for service, response time and budgeting all play a bigger role, the chiefs say.
There is no formula.
"I don't know what the magic number is," said Police Chief Robert Bush Jr.
In his perfect world, his department would have up to 280 people, 240 of them police officers.
By contrast, Bush considers 206 officers to be full staffing. That's been the high mark for officers in the past few years. An even more stark contrast: The city had 300-some officers in the mid-1970s when he joined the department.
Right now, Bush has 184 officers and faces losing about 45 of them to layoffs if the tax fails.
Bush largely pegs his staffing needs to response time.
He considers three to five minutes on emergencies and 30 to 45 minutes on nonemergencies the goal, considering the budget he has now.
"How can I get that car there quicker?" Bush said.
The best way to improve response time is to reduce the size of patrol beats, he said. That gives each patrol car a smaller area to cover. Covering less ground lets police arrive more quickly to a call.
Such distances are not a small issue in Youngstown.
The city is laid out to accommodate a population that, at its peak, was twice the current 82,000 residents. A neighboring city, Canton, has about the same population now but is much more compact in comparison, with almost 13.5 fewer square miles.
A neighborhood might be sparsely populated, but police still must drive through all those empty streets to get to a call, Bush said.
Likewise for the fire department, said Chief John J. O'Neill Jr.
National standards set adequate response time to a fire at about 5 minutes.
The city had a three- to five-minute response time before 15 layoffs, buyouts and retirements dropped staffing to 120 firefighters. The result is one closed fire station and a second that closes on days when staffing requires it.
He faces losing two dozen more firefighters if the tax fails.
That means four station closings, and such closures mean fire trucks must come from farther away and take longer to get to a scene.
"If you don't have those neighborhood stations you can't maintain a good response," O'Neill said.
Response is even more critical in this city because there are so many old, wood-frame houses, old wiring and bad furnaces, he said.
Not having enough firefighters can actually cost the city more, because of overtime, O'Neill said.
Firefighter overtime comes in 24-hour chunks if somebody is off and their shift must be covered. That can get expensive in a hurry, O'Neill said.
He drew this correlation:
The department incurs substantial overtime when there are fewer than 135 firefighters available.