County Fire & Rescue presents 5-year plan to augment staff, service

You don’t need them till you need them – and when you do, you appreciate their importance to you and your community. Photos/Roger Bianchini. Video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.

Warren County Fire Chief Richard Mabie and Fire Marshal Gerry Maiatico presented a Five-Year Staffing and Implementation Plan to the Board of Supervisors at a February 5 work session. Maiatico utilized a power point presentation (see Royal Examiner video below) to explain the rationale and cost implications to the county’s elected officials who hold the purse strings to realize the plan.

Maiatico stressed that the plan was developed to be “realistic and attainable”, taking into consideration where the county has been, is, and is anticipated to be demographically in five years; as well as where emergency services across the country are. That latter aspect is important as a comparison point to other communities’ departments the County’s Fire & Emergency Services Department must compete against in seeking federal or state grants to help fund operations or departmental expansion.

So far the department has not fared well in such grant applications, Maiatico noted. However, movement toward implementation of the plan presented Tuesday morning will give the department, not only a needed staffing boost, but also improve its competitive position in future grant applications.

“If you don’t swing, you don’t get a hit,” Maiatico said in response to Supervisor Linda Glavis’s frown at the information that emergency services grants are competed for by a nationwide array of emergency services departments.

Gerry Maiatico explains the process and plan to expand county fire & rescue over next five years to meet county needs – Dan Murray, right, and Archie Fox are pictured.

Crucial to the plan titled “Evaluating the Past, Preparing for the Future” is bringing the department into compliance with standards for staffing and response times based on specific community demographics developed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Those standards are called NFPA 1720.

“How do we meet NFPA 1720 standards to be eligible for grant funding,” Maiatico asked in prefacing the five-year plan he was about to present details of.

The short answer is over a five-year period add a total of 26 uniformed positions to the department’s current paid, uniformed career staffing total of 46 positions. Without significant grant assistance, Maiatico acknowledged such a goal “was not likely” within the recommended time frame.

But you have to start somewhere – and somewhere appears to be tied to a successful application for funding through the Safety for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant Program to add 15 additional staff positions; or failing that, a County commitment to add initial additional staff through County funding likely tied to a tax increase.

“If you don’t have adequate professional fire & rescue it is hard to attract better-paying jobs to the area – that is one thing companies look at when they are considering where to locate or expand,” Board Chairman Dan Murray commented.

A map of county fire & rescue service areas and station locations

The plan for the initial 15 positions, as with the eventual total of 26, would be to place them strategically, including floater positions that could move as countywide needs dictate.

“Some positions are slated to staff and serve additional units in underserved areas of the county, while others are planned to provide essential support services for field personnel,” page 4 of the report states.

The report includes a five-pronged “strategic objectives” plan of departmental priorities. Those objectives are: 24/7 staffing at Rivermont Company 2; increased staffing in high call volume stations; an increase in “floater” positions; adding some support service positions; and an increase in volunteer retention.

“We don’t have a recruiting problem, we have a retention problem – it is too easy to walk away these days,” Maiatico told the supervisors.

On the volunteer side of the department’s current makeup are 65 operational volunteer response personnel, with 45 associate personnel. Those volunteer responders help man eight combination fire and emergency medical staff stations serving more than 39,600 citizens over a 216 square mile county.

And as one person who is alive to write this story due to the timely, approximately two-minute response time, I am told, by Company One’s Advanced Life Support (ALS) unit upon the occasion of my cardiac arrest just over six years ago, I vote – if I had gotten that board vice chairmanship and had a vote – to see that County Emergency Services gets the funding and staffing necessary to adequately cover Warren County as we approach the third decade of the 21^st Century.

Because as has been pointed out to me by a number of people since, had Company One’s ALS staff been covering, as they often do, an emergency outside town limits I would not be here now – lobbying for any necessary expansion of their budget to meet departmental needs.

As noted above, see Royal Examiner’s linked video of Gerry Maiatico’s power point presentation detailing a departmental staffing overview and Strategic Five-Year Staffing and Implementation Plan.

• Download copy of the Presentation Slides here.
• Download a copy of the Strategic Five Year Staffing and Implementation Plan FY 2020 – 2025 here.

Oh, and thanks to Paula for keeping me going for those two minutes till Company One’s ALS boys arrived on scene.

A month after his heart abruptly stopped for no good reason this reporter thanks some of those who saved his life the afternoon of Dec. 31, 2012. Photo/Roger’s camera in hands of Co. 1 staff