What is the fate of the Campbell Fire Department?

By Sarah Lehr

slehr@vindy.com

campbell

For more than a decade, the fate of the Campbell Fire Department has fanned the flames of debate.

The department now employs a mixture of full-time and auxiliary – or part-time – firefighters.

City leaders are wondering, however, if this model can and should be sustained into the future.

When Campbell was in fiscal emergency, a state auditor, among other recommendations, suggested the city convert its fire department to an all-auxiliary one. The shift would be a cost-savings measure because, unlike full-time employees, the city does not provide health insurance to auxiliary firefighters. Departments staffed only by auxiliary firefighters are often referred to as volunteer fire departments, though the part-time “volunteers” do typically earn stipends or hourly wages.

When the state first placed Campbell in fiscal emergency in 2004, the city had a total deficit of $598,128 aggregated from seven funds.

Though the city shed its fiscal-emergency status in 2013, the auditor’s recommendation for the fire department continues to dog city council.

The topic came up last year in response to a proposed charter amendment. A committee of city residents had convened, as is required once every 10 years, to recommend changes to the city’s charter. City voters ultimately decide whether the amendments are adopted.

Among the committee’s proposed changes was an amendment backed by members of the fire department. The amendment would have restricted council’s ability to reduce or eliminate the fire department without a vote from the electorate.

The committee, at the urging of city council, ended up rescinding the amendment before it went to the ballot. Members of council had cited the auditor’s recommendation and expressed concern that the amendment would make it too difficult to alter the fire department’s structure in the future.

Council President George Levendis said this month that he could not yet say definitively whether he supported switching to an all-volunteer fire department. He added that he plans to keep monitoring the numbers and said he favors maintaining full-time firefighters for as long as it is financially possible to do so.

The Campbell Fire Department has four full-time employees, including a chief who earns $22.14 hourly.

The department’s three full-time captains earn $14.90 an hour. The city also employs 16 auxiliary firefighters who earn between $9 and $12.25 hourly, depending on cumulative hours worked.

Mayor Nick Phillips, formerly a city police officer, strongly opposes eliminating full-time firefighters. The mayor believes that residents would suffer with an all-volunteer fire department because of delayed response times to emergencies and increased homeowner’s insurance rates.

Though other area fire departments employ only part-timers, Fire Chief Nicholas Hrelec said he doubts that model would work for Campbell.

“I understand the city’s position dollars and cents-wise, but I don’t know if it will work here,” Hrelec said. “A lot of our guys don’t live in Campbell. We don’t have the jobs in the city anymore.”

Campbell’s full-time firefighters take turns staffing 24-hour shifts and respond to blazes directly from the fire department. In contrast, auxiliary firefighters respond from wherever they are at the time of a call and have the option not to respond to any call. Oftentimes, they cannot respond if they are at work.

“It used to be that the owners of every ma and pa store in Campbell had a son who was a volunteer firefighter,” fire Capt. Greg Rosile said. “They made it easier. Not every employer will let you respond to calls when you’re on the clock. If you don’t have full-timers, you can’t guarantee that someone’s going to be around to respond.”

The Campbell Fire Department’s response time averages between four and five minutes, but Hrelec believes response times would lack without full-timers.

“We could be talking about the difference between life and death,” Hrelec said.

City council passed a $9,812,837 budget last week, which includes $410,870 for the fire department. Levendis, however, has called for a temporary freeze on nonessential spending due to a projected deficit of about $84,000 in the general fund. Council will meet Wednesday to discuss amending the budget.