By Patrick Adrian
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CLAREMONT — The city plans to freeze the creation of new positions in the proposed fiscal 2021 budget and instead fund a citywide staffing study to guide decisions for future hiring priorities.
The Claremont City Council approved the pursuit of a study at its budget discussion on Wednesday, during a conversation with Fire Chief Bryan Burr, who was seeking funds to add one full-time firefighter to his department.
The Claremont Fire Department ultimately hopes to restore four full-time firefighter positions that have been lost since 2018. The department currently operates with four-shift crews, each with four members, but prefers each crew to have at least five firefighters so that there are always four firefighters on duty during vacations or sick leave, Burr said.
The National Fire Prevention Association recommends four-member crews when first arriving on scene to carry out a “two-in, two-out” policy. This policy, mandated for firefighters by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), says that firefighters never go into a fire or rescue situation alone and that two firefighters remain outside the hazard area as backup.
On Wednesday, Burr asked the council to approve funding for one full-time firefighter in the 2021 budget to begin rebuilding the department’s staff. The position is projected to cost between $116,000 to $120,000, with $105,000 to cover salary and benefits and the remaining funds for gear and possible training. The cost would have an estimated impact of 16 cents to the tax rate.
But City Manager Ed Morris advised the council to take a more comprehensive approach by completing a city-wide staffing study and a merit-pay compensation study before adding any new city positions.
“We have many departments that have staffing issues,” Morris said. “Personally, I think that adding staff to any department without proper staffing research in all departments would be a knee-jerk reaction.”
Morris said that the Claremont Police Department and Department of Parks and Recreation are among the two having difficulty covering all their needed duties at their current staffing levels.
“Every department has a lot of work and [their staff] are struggling to keep up,” Morris said. “I think looking city wide at what our council goals are and our city needs are and where we want to put those resources.”
Additionally, the city is still conducting an employee compensation study for merit-pay workers, whose pay scales have fallen far behind those in surrounding communities, Morris said.
“I think it’s important that we fairly compensate the people we have now before we start adding more people,” Morris said. “It’s almost a slap in the face to those we have now to say that we cannot compensate you as the compensation plan says we should but we’re going to add more people.”
While understanding the fire department’s needs, Morris said he would like whatever staffing plan for the fire department to be sustained. The city might hire one or two firefighters now but have to cut positions a couple of years later due to budget restraints.
The Claremont Fire Department has a history of staffing fluctuations due in part to changes in city managers and councillors over time, Burr said.
In 2013 the Claremont Fire Department received a federal grant that funded three full-time positions for three years — from 2014 to 2017. Known as the Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response (SAFER) grant, this peer-reviewed program funds the initial hire of staff with the expectation that the municipality will continue funding the positions thereafter.
Some city councilors at the time, however, indicated they wouldn’t fund these positions when the grant money ended, and the city council never found another funding solution, Burr said.
Since 2017, the department has lost four firefighters through attrition, Burr said. While the firefighters hired through the SAFER grant are still with the department, the city has offset those by not replacing the retirement or promotion of others. The department lost a fourth position to attrition in 2018 during former city manager Ryan McNutt’s tenure.
Burr told the council that he welcomes a staffing study as it would provide evidence-based recommendations to guide future councils and administrators.
“We need to have a tool to say this is what we need,” Burr said.”We need to have a document. I don’t want to be here in two years dealing with a budget that needs to be cut.”
The city council will hold a public hearing of the proposed 2021 budget on Wednesday.
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