Fire fee increase would boost firefighter ranks


  • July 23, 2015
  • /   Shannon Nickinson
  • /   community-dashboard

UPDATE: On July 23, commissioners voted to increase the fire fee by $15 to staff Ferry Pass and West Pensacola fire stations. The Board also voted to fund an additional 12 firefighters out of reserves. The additional firefighers would either staff Myrtle Grove or be split between the remaining three stations (Myrtle Grove, Innerarity Point and Bellview).

Of all the things government does, public safety is among the most important.

But the fire service provided to some communities in Escambia County is not meeting what Public Safety Director Mike Weaver calls a basic expectation.

“The basic response a citizen expects when there is a fire is that the closest station sends a truck,” Weaver told County Commissioners last week. “They are expecting a fire truck from the fire station down the street to show up.

“At these five stations, this data shows when we’re not meeting that minimal expectation.”

On Thursday, Escambia County Commissioners will vote to increase the fire service fee in the county to add 24 more paid firefighters to the public safety ranks. At the July 16 committee of the whole meeting, they voted, 3-1, to increase the residential fire service fee from $85 to $100 annually. Chairman Steven Barry was the nay vote; Commissioner Doug Underhill was absent from the meeting.

The issue came up following two house fires on Good Friday of this year in the Ferry Pass neighborhood that outpaced that volunteer station’s resources to respond first.

Five volunteer stations — Bellview, Ferry Pass, Innerarity Point, Myrtle Grove and West Pensacola — are missing responses to fire calls.

 
{{business_name}}Source: Escambia County Public Safety Department data.

Source: Escambia County Public Safety Department data.

It takes 12 career firefighters to fully staff a station. The number of certified volunteers needed to staff a station at that same level is 36. The maximum number of volunteers any station now has is Beulah with 19. Since January, there’s been a net loss of active volunteer firefighters, Weaver said.

To fully staff all five of those stations with paid career firefighters and fill in staffing gaps at other stations, would require 73 positions, Weaver’s presentation noted.

Paying for that would mean raising the residential fire services fee from $85 to $127 a year (and raising the commercial rate from $0.04 to $0.0542 and unincorporated rates from $11 to $15.88)

Commissioners didn’t seem to have the appetite to go that far, but they clearly got the message that the pool of volunteers is not big enough to handle the demands in these communities for service.

“I don’t like voting for any raised fee, but I’m not going stand up here and say I’m never going to raise something,” said District 4 Commissioner Grover Robinson. “I’m not going to let safety ever be in the way raising something. It was clear to me (after Good Friday fires), people said (at a town hall meeting) I want to make sure there’s a fire department. Paying something extra to make sure someone shows up is critical to them.

“I was brought to this issue by Ferry Pass, but I feel just as strongly about it for Myrtle Grove and West Pensacola and these other areas.”

Volunteer ranks dwindling

Escambia has been in the fire service business for 73 years starting with a volunteer station in Warrington. Weaver said that in 1986, a large fire on Perdido Key demolished a condominium. That led the Commission to established the first municipal services benefit unit — a fee the government charges for a specific service — for fire services.

Blue ribbon committees in 1984 and again in 1995 studied fire response. Both noted that volunteer ranks had problems recruiting and retaining qualified people.

The same need exists now.

The county has taken steps to streamline the application process and to step up recruiting, both in advertising and by word of mouth, but the needed number of volunteers has not materialized.

Changes in state requirements for certifications and training for volunteers have made it harder than it once was to join their ranks.

Weaver started as a volunteer firefighter on Pensacola Beach when there were no required hours of training. He recalled filling out his application on a legal pad and being able to essentially start his “dream job” immediately.

“Now it takes 206 hours to do that dream job,” he said.

“We’re just getting a smaller and smaller group just like we were in the mid-80s,” Weaver said.

Escambia County ranks 12th in the state fire responses with 1,184 fires in an area with a population of 301,120. We rank 12th in dollar value of fire damage with $12,054,254 worth of property lost.

Weaver said firefighters respond to an average of three fire calls a week, and that does not count their response to medical emergency calls, falls and other similar calls firefighters also may  be asked to respond to.

Commissioner Wilson Robertson was clear that the need is tangible.

“I don’t want to see another news report about somebody needs help and they can’t get a fire truck and their house is burning down,” he said.

Commissioners will have two choices — phasing in the increase over two years or doing it all at once. The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. Click here for the agenda.

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