Council Agrees to Hire Four Full-time Firefighters

After years of relying on paid-on call firefighters, Shakopee will at last have a full-time weekday crew.

Tuesday night, the council narrowly passed a measure to hire four full-time firefighters, with three in favor and two against. Mayor Brad Tabke said that the city had explored alternatives, but found that hiring full-timers was the only truly viable course.

"There are other options, but they're not solutions to our problem. We are not serving our residents to the level that we should during daytime hours," Tabke told fellow council members before the vote. 

The Fire Department has long had only three full-time employees—the office service worker, the fire marshal and the chief, augmented by 45 paid on-call firefighters. The on-call workers typically have full-time day jobs, which lengthens the time it takes an individual firefighter to respond. A number of on-call firefighters work outside of Shakopee, which often forestalls their participation altogether.

Meanwhile, Shakopee has grown by leaps and bounds. From 2000 to  2010, the city's population grew 80 percent, burgeoning from 20,568 to 37,814. Calls for service have increased accordingly, from 488 calls in 2001 to 600 in 2011.

As a result, over the last two years the Fire Department's response time has become an issue, Fire Chief Rick Coleman said. first six months of 2012, Shakopee's average response time was 13 minutes on weekdays. Coleman says that standard response time for a city Shakopee's size should be nine minutes, according to the National Fire Protection Association. 

It will cost Shakopee about $250,000 to hire four new, full-time firefighters, a sum that includes a year of both wages and benefits. In a memo to the council, Coleman called the expense "not unreasonable" when weighed against the risk to Shakopee residents' lives and property.

Council Member Matt Lehman wasn't sold. He said he would only agree to such a measure as a "last resort."

"The only complaint I've heard about response time is from the chief, not the community," Lehman said. "I'd like us to try other alternatives to see what works. Make the full-time fire secretary a firefighter, or use public works guys and other city employees."

Coleman said that the Fire Department did, in fact, use employees from other city departments as first responders.

"Right now public works people do respond, but sometimes they're laying asphalt and they can't leave," Coleman said. "From the time they leave their work and get to the fire station that's a seven minute average gap."

Full-time responders could be ready to go in a minute flat, he added.

In turn, Lehman indicated that he'd be willing to pay for the wasted asphalt if it meant that the city could reduce response time without adding to the staff. Council Member Pamela Schurman was inclined to agree with Lehman.

"One piece that's missing to me is that we haven't tried anything else. We've talked about it a lot, but we haven't tried anything different," Schurman said.

In a memo to the council, Coleman wrote that he'd looked into partnerships with nearby cities, but that these joint ventures were deemed unworkable. He said that the city had discussed the matter with businesses in town who employ on-call firefighters, asking them to make their mutual employees available on a consistent basis. Business leaders recognized the problem and expressed support for the Fire Department, but made no promises. Making employees available on specific weekdays would be "just too disruptive" to their business.

Increasing the number of on-call firefighters would not necessarily solve the problem either, Council Member Jay Whiting argued. Vetting on-call applicants for availability has also proven to be ineffective, Tabke added.

"There's no guarantee. We've tried to hire folks who can come during the day," Tabke said. "For the last 20 years we've been asking them if they can, and they say yes but when it comes to actually doing it it's a different thing."

Tabke, Whiting and Council Member Steven Clay voted to pass the measure. Lehman and Schurman were in the dissenting minority.

Coleman said that he hoped to have the new firefighters hired by mid-July, but the process would likely take more time given the large volume of applicants. Coleman told the council the city would probably get about 3,000.

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