CLINTON — The Board of Selectmen considered a budget proposal Tuesday from the fire department that would allow the department to hire three more full-time staff, but ultimately decided it was too expensive for the coming budget cycle.
Fire Chief Travis Leary presented the plan at Tuesday’s selectmen’s meeting, and laid out the staffing problems the department is currently facing and the benefits additional staff could bring to the town. Selectmen agreed that it was a well thought out proposal, but said they were concerned about the expense to the town and the impact on the tax rate in these economic times.
“I do think it’s a good plan,” said Town Manager Earla Haggerty. “I think it’s progressive, and forward-thinking; it’s taking us into the next century.”
Now, the department has three full-time staff, 17 on-call staff, seven per-diem employees and the fire chief, which is a part-time position. The current staffing rotation means that at least one person is always at the station working.
The schedule has two people at the station Monday through Friday, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., and outside of those hours there is one person at the station and the second person is on call — meaning they don’t have to come in unless there is a call that needs them.
Operating the ambulance requires two people, so if a call comes in, an on-call person will respond to assist, and most fires require four people present — two people to go into the fire, and two people outside the fire to assist — so on-call staff also respond to fire calls.
Right now, the department has a difficult time filling all the shifts at the fire station, Leary said, and the department is also seeing the number of calls that come in increase significantly. During the pandemic most departments saw their call volume decrease, but not Clinton. In 2020, the department got 742 calls, and in 2021 that rose to 794 calls, Leary said.
“One of the big problems is our call volume increases every year, so we’re using these on-call people more and more on a regular basis,” Leary said.
And the staffing difficulties mean that it takes the department longer to respond to calls, Leary said, because they are waiting for the on-call or per diem employees to come in. They also get a lot of calls asking the ambulance to do transfers, Leary said, like moving patients between hospitals. Those calls would bring revenue in for the town, but often the department can’t do them because they don’t have the staff to respond.
“Our response time has increased because when we’re waiting for somebody to come from home, it just delays us,” Leary said.
Leary’s proposal would be to hire three full-time positions, which would then allow the department to have two people available at the station at all times. It would reduce response time for ambulance calls, since they wouldn’t have to wait for an on-call person to arrive.
“This will give us two personnel on duty at the station 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” Leary said. “So there will be no more on-call person. This will greatly reduce response time because we don’t have to wait for that second person to come in.”
The additional staff would also mean the department could take more transfer calls for the ambulances, and bring in more revenue for the town from those trips.
But doubling the full-time staff for the department would mean a significant increase to its budget. The 2021-22 budget for the fire department was roughly $440,095 and with the new staffing proposal, the budget would increase to $751,062. The plan would also increase the revenue the department brings in, which right now is around $200,000. Under the new staffing plan, Leary said he anticipates that increasing to at least $300,000.
Selectmen agreed that the plan was solid, and is likely what the department will need in the long-term. But with the current economy and the impact the plan would have on the tax rate, it isn’t feasible this year, selectmen said.
There were also concerns that the proposal wouldn’t be approved at the annual Town Meeting, and Chairman Jeffrey Towne said that he was very concerned about how the budget would increase the tax rate.
“In these economic times — it’s not going to happen, it’s not gonna pass at the Town Meeting,” Towne said.
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