The city council’s ways and means subcommittee reviewed the fire department’s proposed $15.75 million budget for FY27 last week as part of its public budget hearings.
Most of the questions from the council revolved around staffing, especially at the new Point of Pines firehouse, which opened last summer.
“This year, we are going up a few more positions, from 122 uniformed firefighters to a few more than last year, so we are thankful for that,” said Fire Chief James Cullen.
The total count for uniformed firefighters is up to 124 in the proposed budget.
“Most of the other line items are level funded, it is a lean budget all across the board,” said Cullen.
Ward 4 Councillor Paul Argenzio asked if the Point of Pines fire station was fully staffed or if there were any issues staffing it.
“When we opened it last year in July, we did have to thin out some of the manpower across the other districts to fund that,” said Cullen. “Our overall goal to really fund the entire department is to reach 130 members at some point. We are working on that, we are getting a few more this year and hopefully we continue on that trend.”
Cullen said the staffing is a little less than ideal at the Point of Pines station, but added that it is fully operational every day.
City finance director Richard Viscay said one of the challenges of staffing the Point of Pines station is that the department doesn’t have as many firefighters as it needs, so the city is backfilling that station with overtime.
While there are only two new positions in the budget, Cullen said that with retirements and open positions, the department is looking to hire 10 firefighters to bring it to full staffing under the budget.
“Right now, we are facing deficit spending overtime until we get the manpower to staff that fully,” said Viscay. “Like the chief said, we are shooting for 130 firefighters, we are going up two this year … as we increase personnel, we will drop that overtime line down.”
Argenzio also asked about the condition of the Freeman Street fire station, which is more than 100 years old.
“It is still operational, and it is our most important station in the city as far as location,” said Cullen. “We have to keep that viable.”
The fire chief said the public works department did have some engineers come down to the station to look at the main issue, which is the apparatus floor.
“Over the next two years, we will have to put a little bit of money into keeping it going,” said Cullen. “The long-range plan would be, ideally, to replace it somewhere in the area if we could do that; but there are some other options to put some money into it and rehab the station and keep it as is, just put some needed repairs into it. But that is very important to us and our operations.”