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08/21/2023 02:21 PMDuring budget discussions earlier this year, Branford’s fire officials raised the alarm that the Town is experiencing an ongoing shortage of volunteer staff—a national trend—in the face of increased calls and continued expansion of development. In response, a staffing plan proposing two options has been developed by the Board of Fire Commissioners and Branford Fire Administration to address the need.
At the Aug. 16 Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting, the BOS was notified that the Board of Fire Commissioners had voted unanimously on June 22 to support option one of the staffing plan.
As the fire officials’ summary problem statement notes, “Branford Fire Department has a deficient level of staffing in relation to its high volume of calls for service. It cannot meet the staffing and deployment standard for fire response or provide an equitable level of service to all areas of Town due to a resource deployment model from a singular location.”
Branford Fire Department headquarters at 45 North Main Street is currently staffed with 40 full-time career firefighter/paramedics. There are only 27 volunteer firefighters among Branford’s four volunteer companies based at firehouses around town. As a result, since February, the four fire companies have been training to act as one in order to increase the focus on getting one unit in service when dispatched.
Option one involves creating an Emergency Medical Services (EMS)-only, non-firefighting division. The second option expands the current firefighter/paramedic model. Both plans call for moving forward with constructing a fire station for career staff at 32 Acorn Road in the east end of town, as well as placing career staff at the Indian Neck Fire Station. Both models provide for a workforce sized to meet the demands of the service area.
Option one’s three-year plan to create an EMS division would bring the career staff count up to 64 by 2026, broken out as 48 fire/EMS and 16 EMS only. As personnel are added; annual associated costs would increase by $250,000 in 2024; $1,680,080 in 2025; and $1,420,684 in 2026.
Option two would increase the current firefighter/paramedic staff from 40 to 64 by 2026. The annual cost increase would be $250,000 in 2024, $1,741,612 in 2025, and $2,131,025 in 2026.
With the hiring of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), as recommended in option one, the salary per person decreases by $42,372.00. By hiring 16 EMTs rather than the 12 firefighters/paramedics recommended in option two, the department can add more staff to reach its staffing goal in a shorter period of time. Additionally, the annual costs for continuing education for paramedics is a substantial expense; while EMTs require less continuing education, so annual savings on recurring salary and training costs make option one fiscally desirable over the long run.
To enact option one, the proposal will require an agreement with the collective bargaining unit due to the addition of a new job classification. Also, while the department would not be permitted to apply current SAFER grant funding offset hiring (the grant specifies bolstering firefighter ranks), the grant money could be used to offset manning the proposed eastern fire station with eight firefighter/paramedics.
In recommending option one, the fire officials stated in the report, “By hiring 16 career EMTs, we can finally establish a much-needed second career engine company. This can be achieved by reallocating firefighters/paramedics from ambulances to fire trucks. Although no additional firefighters are initially being added in the first phase of this plan, assigning EMTs to ambulances enhances the effectiveness of our existing firefighting resources by adjusting their roles. Consequently, more firefighters will be present in the town for longer periods. Furthermore, this change enables the formation of a three-person engine company, which aligns with our current staffing levels for an engine and significantly improves safety and efficiency compared to a two-person engine company.
Our current schedule consists of four distinct shifts, each adhering to a 24/72-hour work schedule, resulting in an average of 42 working hours per week. By incorporating four new EMTs into each shift, the daily staffing would increase to 14 members (10 firefighters/paramedics and four EMTs). Station 9 in Indian Neck is designated as the location for the additional engine company.”
To enhance the overall effectiveness of option one, the plan calls for consolidating the existing four volunteer companies into two. Company 4 in Short Beach would be permanently closed, and its remaining members, along with the Indian Neck Company 9, would be reassigned to either M.P. Rice Company 2 or Stony Creek Company 5.
Fire officials will also present the plan to the Board of Finance as the town moves forward to respond to this urgent need. Final funding approval would be required by the Representative Town Meeting.
A letter to board members and elected officials outlining the issue has been submitted to the town by Fire Commission chair Robert J. Massey Jr. and Fire Chief Thomas F. Mahoney Jr.
The letter, read into the record at the Aug. 16 BOS meeting by first selectman Jamie Cosgrove, states, “The Board of Fire Commissioners, along with the Fire Department Administration, has been warning for years that the department is facing a staffing shortage. The erosion of the volunteer force has reduced the number of trained volunteer members to critically low levels. The volunteer companies are more than just a backup to the career staff.
These companies are strategically located within densely populated areas where people live and sleep; they are the first responders in their districts. They also provide the additional workforce needed for various call types that require a multiple-company response.
Call volume has steadily increased, driven mainly by emergency medical incidents. The frequency and length of these incident types often leaves us solely reliant upon the volunteer companies.
Four of our five engine companies are volunteer. Despite recruitment and retention efforts that include following recommended best practices, we continue to lose volunteers faster than we can replace them.
Since 1996, three volunteer companies and the volunteer rescue squad have closed due to declining membership. Branford is not alone in this trend; it is a statewide and national problem. Membership has dropped so significantly that in most instances, we can only rely on a single volunteer company by combining the available members of all four.
We’ve added automatic mutual aid from East Haven to compensate for our lack of resources. However, this comes with the quid pro quo of sending our limited resources out of town to provide the same service to East Haven.
Two additional issues exacerbate the problem. First, development already underway, with more proposed, will add even more pressure to an already overburdened system. The second is a deployment problem: our resources are strategically deployed at multiple stations to meet the recognized standard of an engine company on a scene within four minutes. Unreliable staffing at these locations prohibits us from achieving this response time goal and creates an inequity of service for the parts of town previously protected by volunteer staff.
Our community has outgrown its fire department, and action is required to match our resources to the needs of the people we serve. This report provides background and significance to assist you with making informed decisions regarding the future of our fire and emergency services. Please read the information within and carefully consider our recommendations.”