Warren council weighs issue of firefighters

By Ed Runyan | January 7, 2011 at 12:05a.m.

Warren Fire Chief Ken Nussle

WARREN

Two primary points of view emerged Thursday afternoon when city council’s police and fire committee met with Fire Chief Ken Nussle:

The cost to the city if 24 firefighters are hired as planned with a $5 million, two-year federal grant and then laid off in two years is roughly $250,000 in unemployment payments.

The cost to the city if it doesn’t move forward with the hiring of the last 14 of the 24 firefighters is the loss of $5 million in federal funding and the city having 51 firefighters instead of 75.

Nussle said it’s a little late to be discussing whether to accept the grant now. The city already has started to use the grant, and the grant calls for the city to use it all or none of it.

After the two-year grant runs out, the city has to either pay for the firefighters itself or lay them off.

“Everyone wants firefighters, but our question is where is the money going to come from to pay the 26 weeks of unemployment, and will that lead to laying off other firefighters?” Councilman John Brown asked.

Councilman Al Novak said he is “scared” for the future of Warren because the state and federal governments are both in financial trouble, and he wonders if that won’t lead to even more problems for Warren.

“This is one hurdle,” Novak said of costs associated with the grant. “There are others.”

“Why are we still living like we have 65,000 people and five factories? And we’re never going to have them again,” Councilwoman Helen Rucker said.

“Why isn’t every department [in the city] talking about how we’re going to live with 35,000 to 40,000 people and two factories? It’s time to live within our means. Maybe we should have turned it [the grant] down,” she said.

“Why would you turn down free money?” Councilman Dan Sferra said, noting that for two years the federal government will pay the salary and benefits for 24 firefighters.

The potential cost to the city if it doesn’t have the money in two years to retain them is about $250,000 in unemployment costs, roughly $10,000 per firefighter, or $5,000 per year per firefighter.

“That’s a bargain,” Sferra said.

The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant the city received last year also doesn’t pay for the gear for each of the 14 new firefighters, or their physicals. That adds an additional $60,000 to the city’s cost.

The department dropped from 75 firefighters in 2008 to 51 as a result of layoffs in 2009 and attrition. The 10 firefighters brought back in October and November with the SAFER grant and 14 more to be hired this spring will give the department 75 again.

Rucker said she felt the requirement that each new firefighter must have emergency-medical-service training has “raised the standard even higher” and made it harder for women and minorities to get hired.

“Warren is the only department of its size that doesn’t have women,” she said.

One woman and two black males are among the candidates who took the civil-service test last month for the 14 open positions.