“Similar to everybody else, we’re struggling with the number of part-time staff members available,” said Thomas. “Some departments have five, six, seven guys a day on overtime. It’s a serious challenge to the fire service right now.”
In recent months, Fairfield Fire Chief Don Bennett proposed converting the city’s combination department ― which employs both part-time and full-time firefighters ― into a professional department, or all full-time firefighters.
Thomas said they’re not considering that type of move but would like to increase their staffing by hiring 12 full-time firefighters. Currently, there are two full-time and 10 part-time firefighters, but he is proposing the township have at least half his daily firefighter staff as full-timers.
The fire department employs about 80 firefighters, and 70 are part-time. Thomas said he’d need 45 to 50 more to “comfortably” fill all shifts.
It costs around $104,000 a year to fund one firefighter position at the township and would be nearly $1.25 million to fund the 12-person request. Thomas said he’d like to get three new full-timers on staff now and fill upwards of, pending the approval of the township trustees, nine full-time positions with the assistance of a federal Staffing For Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant. The SAFER grant would help fund firefighters for three years, and after three years, the township must maintain the increased level of firefighter positions.
Thomas said trustees may modify the nine-person request when formally presented to the board. The next cycle of the SAFER grant has not yet been opened, and it could take six to eight months for the township to hear an answer. The township applied for a SAFER grant a few years ago, and their application was denied.
“We’ve got a responsibility to at least try to improve our staffing problems,” Thomas said, adding that “this isn’t an overnight decision by any stretch of the imagination.”
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Credit: Michael D. Pitman
Township trustee-elect Michael Berding, who joins the board on Jan. 1, confirmed that there “may be a need to convert some part-time firefighter positions into full-time firefighter positions to help alleviate the issues we have with staffing.” Township Administrator Julie Vonderhaar also confirmed retention will be a focus for 2022.
The problem for Fairfield Twp., and other area combination departments, is they end up training young firefighters with very little or no experience ― and in some cases pay for their paramedic school ― and they are then hired by another department.
The city of Cincinnati is expected to hire upwards of 100 people in the coming year, Thomas said.
“We end up operating more as a training facility sometimes, and that’s frustrating for us, but it’s the nature of the beast,” Thomas said. “We’re working our way through it. This is the most difficult I’ve ever seen it in my 30-plus years. But at some point, we’re hoping the workplace will finally get saturated and we’ll have more people than we need, and we’ll go back to the way we were where we have people looking for jobs, not jobs looking for people.”
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