PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles City Council agreed on a split vote to guarantee minimum 24-hour staffing of five personnel in the fire department through July, a move that will cost overtime.
The council’s action Tuesday ensures that fire insurance rates for homeowners and entrepreneurs won’t increase, at least through the first half of 2017, Fire Chief Ken Dubuc said.
The 5-2 vote, with council members Lee Whetham and Michael Merideth dissenting, seals a memorandum of understanding between the city and the International Association of Firefighters Local 656 under which staffing requirement begins Jan. 1.
Whetham said he could not support “a mandatory six-month period of overtime” and expressed support for moving faster on hiring full-time employees to fill the department’s staffing needs.
But council member Dan Gase said it was a good first step.
“It gets the insurance issue taken care of,” Gase said. “We are making progress. We’re just about there.”
Dubuc said the overtime could cost an estimated $60,000 of the $120,000 budgeted for extra department hours in 2017.
The Washington Surveying and Rating Bureau (WSRB), an insurance underwriter, recommended downgrading the city’s fire insurance rating from 4 to 5 due to staff workloads, low staffing numbers, pumper capacity, the need for additional officers, the lack of a reserve ladder truck, limited prevention certification and programs, and after-hours refueling issues, Dubuc said.
Council members also agreed to hold a Feb. 28 work session — a month earlier than planned — to discuss options for funding at least two full-time positions that Dubuc said are needed to reduce individual firefighters’ call-volume workloads but which would only be employing a bandage approach to the issue.
Dubuc’s intention is to hire two more firefighters by July, he said.
But he said Wednesday four more firefighters actually are needed at a total cost of about $300,000 in salary and benefits.
“To even come close to maximizing any sort of efficiency, it would be four [new firefighters],” Dubuc said.
Dubuc added that Local 656 agreed to lower the starting wage of new hires by 10 percent, with $56,000 annually the entry-level pay.
Benefits will be an additional approximately $15,000 a year based on the number of dependents.
Dubuc said the extra staffing could be funded, at least in part, by an increase in Medic 1 fees paid by residents and businesses on their utility bills.
Medic 1 fees that pay for emergency medical services are $6.04 a month for residential customers and will increase to $6.28 in January, Dubuc said.
Fees could increase in 2017 as a result of Dubuc’s recommendation to the City Council to add firefighter positions through an increase in Medic 1 fees.
The move would cost less and benefit citizens more that an insurance-rating change, which would cost residents money and reap them no additional services, Dubuc said Wednesday.
The insurance-rating change threatened by the WSRB would lead to an average 5 percent increase in rates for residences, or $35 a year on a $600 policy.
It would lead to an average 10 percent increase for a “very small retail business,” or about $178 annually, according to Dubuc’s presentation to the council Tuesday.
A Port Angeles firefighter averages about 1,550 mostly medical-related calls a year compared with 773 for Sequim-area Clallam County Fire District 3 firefighters and 873 for Aberdeen firefighters, Dubuc said.
A seven-part plan, with which WSRB has agreed, has been put in place to stave off the rating change.
Dubuc said completed tasks included adding a 1,500 gallon-per-minute quick-attack pumper, reclassifying a training officer to assistant chief, adding prevention training, adding prevention programs and fulfilling after-hours fuel support.
City Council members finalized the plan Tuesday by approving an interlocal agreement with Fire District No. 3 for access to a reserve ladder truck and adopting the plan for five-person minimum staffing, which doubles the department’s transport capability.
The fire department has not added staff since 1991, Dubuc said.
The department has been at a staffing level of 4.5 emergency personnel on duty per 24-hour shift since then.
During that 25-year period, call volume has increased more than 240 percent.
“The community is basically relying on the fire department more and more every year,” Dubuc said.
“The fire department and 9-1-1 is becoming the safety net.”
Whetham said he did not understand why two people could not be hired sooner rather than “paying for three people and getting two” by paying overtime to existing staff.
But City Manager Dan McKeen said he assumed the City Council would want a sustainable funding mechanism in place to fund the positions.
When Merideth expressed concern that that the council was being asked “at the zero hour” to approve the memo of understanding, McKeen, the city’s former fire chief, appeared to interrupt him in mid-sentence.
McKeen said Dubuc, McKeen’s former assistant chief, brought the staffing issue to council members’ attention in May.
Dubuc warned council members then that unless staffing shortfalls were addressed, the fire insurance rating would be affected.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
