FIRE STATION IN JEOPARDY, AGAIN

Officials at the Elyria Fire Department received word from the Mayor’s Office today that as of Monday their minimum staffing level is to decrease from 17 to 14.

Elyria Fire Chief John Zielinski said he called the Mayor’s Office this morning on another matter when he heard the news. "I received the memo through fax from the Mayor’s Office and it says “As of 0800hrs Monday August 27th the Fire Departments threshold for necessitating overtime will be reduced to a 14 man level.” What that means is our daily manning level which has been at 17 will be dropped to 14, so when you have people calling off, where before we would call people in to bring up to 17 now that threshold will be 14.”

Chief Zielinski said the memo also said; “You are directed to staff and stations that you find most efficient. We are both responsible for providing the best possible service to the citizens of Elyria while remaining financially viable.” What he is telling me here is that I have to find away to operate with 14 being my minimum. Each time you drop a number it changes how we operate. The line that I have drawn, as the Chief of the Elyria Fire Department, when you drop to 16 I go to 4 man engine companies, for safety factors for my Firefighters, and that in essence closes Station 2 on East Broad Street.”

Today the Elyria Fire Department is running 4 Engines out of 4 stations, a “jump crew” that runs either the Aerial or the Rescue, a man in the watch office and the Chief’s car.
When the number hits 16; 3 Engines with 4 and the Rescue with 2, Chief’s car and watch office.
When the number hits 15; 2 Engines with 4, 1 Engine with 3, Rescue with 2, Chief’s car and watch office.
If the number ever gets to 14; 3 Engines with 4, Chief’s car and watch office.

Chief Zielinski said that there is a 17/10 Standard that calls for the first Engine to arrive on the scene of a fire within 4 minutes with the remaining Firefighters and equipment arriving within 8 minutes putting 17 Firefighters on the scene. In the case of Elyria meeting that standard puts all of the Firefighters on duty responding to the scene to effectively fight that fire. If the manpower is 14 rather then 17 they will not meet that standard and then the Officer in charge of that scene will be forced to make a decision about how tactically to handle the fire until they can get the adequate number of people there needed to fight the fire. Chief Zielinski said that no matter how you look at it, when you run a Department with one less truck or fewer men then you run out of resources faster and become a less effective Fire Department.

Chief Zielinski drew criticism in the past when people in the Administration would say he needs to work within his budget. The Chief said that the budget he present to the city for 2007 was returned to him minus $593,000. The Chief said that if that money had been left in his budget the Department wouldn’t be in this problem right now.

In a conversation with Mayor Bill Grace this afternoon he said that every Department submits a budget to the City and that if they simply Ok’d each request the Fire Departments budget would had to have been cut by a million or more. “This is all about them being on pace not to meet their budget, so this is an effort to get the Department to have a chance to come within budget as established at the beginning of the year. Right now they are projected to be three or four hundred thousand over budget, so this is an attempt to help them reach their budget. No department got all that they asked for. Based on priorities and minimum requirements of departments we adjust the budget, that’s just how the process works. To make the budget work the number that was given to them was what was available. Which was a clear message at that time that adjustments would be necessary to fit within that budget. Essentially the only meaningful way to reduce expenses in the department is through minimum staffing, there really aren’t other options available. There are in other departments, you just cut out overtime or cut back on other expenses, in the Fire Department minimum staffing is the lone way to reduce their expenses of any meaningful way.”

When asked how he responds to critics who say just take money away from parks or other departments that are not charged with safety issues the Mayor said that all departments have received cuts and are operating with less funds then they have in the past. The Mayor said that with the exception of the 10 month period when Station 2 was shut down before, the Elyria Fire Department is the only Department that has not been reduced. “I’m a resident of the city just like everyone else and there are certain expectations that I have as a resident. There is feedback that we get, we’ve gone through a city wide planning process in the last year and a half or so where the community has voted, so to speak, at these planning sessions what their priorities would be, they overwhelmingly, in addition to building a new high school which has passed the ballot, but overwhelmingly the community has expressed that they would like to see more resources put into the Police Department. To deal with neighborhood nuisance issues and other criminal activities.”

The Mayor did confirm that the city has made “conditional offers of employment” to four candidates for Police Officers.

The Mayor said that although Police and Fire are their top priority in the budget, it is not at the exclusion of everything else.

Chief Zielinski said that he worries about his Firefighters when this happens because he knows his guys are an aggressive group. “I worry because I know when they go to a fire they will fight it like they would if we were at full manpower, that’s just the way they are. These guys want to beat the fire; they don’t want the fire to beat them.”