South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

Fire-district board looks to add nine firefighter/medic positions

Savings to district could total six figures, Hilmer says of adding nine new positions

The Mehlville Fire Protection District Board of Directors will consider adding nine firefighter/paramedic positions when it meets tonight — March 13.

The Board of Directors will meet at 7 p.m. at the fire district’s Training Facility, 11020 Mueller Road.

During a meeting last week, board members discussed financial projections compiled by Assistant Chief Steve Mossotti that showed adding nine firefighter/paramedic positions would reduce the district’s overtime costs by roughly $566,000, resulting in new personnel costs of about $27,500.

But those financial projections, based on 2007 personnel costs, were termed “conservative” by board Chairman Aaron Hilmer. He noted that adding nine additional firefighter/paramedic positions would provide a “tremendous increase” in service, including staffing the district’s fifth ambulance 24 hours a day for 354 days per year. During 2007, the fifth ambulance was staffed 24 hours a day for 60 days.

Board Treasurer Bonnie Stegman told the Call she is very excited about the prospect of the board adding nine additional firefighter/paramedic positions.

“To me, when I look at the figures, it looks like we’re even actually saving money and we’re going to increase our services. So I’m just really excited about it and just wanted to let people know that we’re still being mindful of our budgetary sense, but we’re going to increase our services,” she said.

Besides staffing the fifth ambulance 24 hours a day 354 days a year, Stegman said, “We’ll have the ability to have fire/medics on the pumpers in a more routine manner. That’s especially important at those houses that don’t have ambulances because as you know time, especially with heart disease and things like that is very important. And now with having that medic on the scene even before the ambulance gets there, they can start therapy and we can actually save lives. That’s just such a plus to the residents …”

Stegman said when she and Hilmer were elected in 2005, they were surprised the district did not have cross-trained firefighter/paramedics.

“I was just so amazed that when we came on board that we didn’t have fire/medics … Most of the districts do, and I couldn’t believe that we didn’t …,” she said.

During the March 6 meeting, Hilmer discussed the district’s past hiring practices.

“… When we first got here, I know one of the first things Mrs. Stegman did was she went to work looking over our hiring standards, testing … What we found is we had some of the worst hiring standards — I would say the worst hiring standards in St. Louis County,” he said. “If you put it in perspective, at the time when Mrs. Stegman and I came here, out of 119 people who worked here, only 18 had qualifications to apply at any other fire or ambulance district in St. Louis County. That’s really 15 percent of our employees.

“I think if you put that in perspective and said: If (in) your local school district only 15 percent of the teachers could go work anywhere else in the county, that’s a troubling statistic. At that time, we changed our standards to hire only cross-trained employees, meaning cross-trained as firefighters and paramedics. Obviously, it necessitated a change in our testing, too,” he said.

Of the district’s 119 emergency responders in 2005, 36 were paramedics, Hilmer said.

“I’m proposing tonight we’re going to hire nine additional people. Once we do that, we’ll have 52 people certified as paramedics, which is almost a 50-percent increase in the amount of medical coverage available,” Hilmer said. “Even with hiring the nine additional people, we’re still going to have one less total person now here in the district than when we came here in 2005. Instead of 137 that we inherited, we’re going to have 136.”

Hilmer also reviewed the financial projections compiled by Mossotti.

“… These numbers are based on our 2007 overtime breakdown and staffing levels, and I think Steve’s going to attest to the fact that was a very tough year. We had some people we terminated. Some people who resigned. Some people who retired. So we really short staffed for a lot of the year. But he’s basing his numbers off that, and I think that’s good because that’s a very conservative estimate. I think that we can only go up from some of the numbers that he’s quoting us,” he said.

In his projections, Mossotti showed that hiring three firefighter/paramedics would reduce the district’s overtime costs by roughly $198,000, resulting in a savings of nearly $56,000. Hiring six firefighter/paramedics would reduce overtime costs by roughly $396,000, resulting in a savings of more than $55,200, according to the assistant chief’s numbers. Hiring nine firefighter/paramedics would reduce overtime costs by $566,578, resulting in new personnel costs of $27,569.

“Steve has figured if we hire nine people, it would cost the district $27,000 extra a year,” Hilmer said. “As I said, I think those are very conservative numbers Steve used. With the changes in the vacation scheduling and with the fact that we’re not going to anticipate a year hopefully as bad as last year with all the aforementioned incidents, I could argue that I think that we could potentially save in six figures a year by doing the — hiring nine extra people … We’re splitting hairs here. This is an art, not a science trying to determine this. If we do the nine, we’ll be able to look back a year later and say: OK, here’s how it really came together …”

The board chairman noted that in the fall of 2005, the district hired 10 firefighter/paramedics to launch its advanced life-support pumper program.

“… One of the reasons we did the cross-training (with) fire/medics, not only so we could get with the times … but that would give us the opportunity to have a paramedic first responder on a fire truck when an ambulance may not be possible to get out there — a tremendous asset, obviously,” he said. “As we know, we have seven firehouses. All of the pumpers are ALS-equipped … What we wanted to be able to do here with the nine additional people was to say: Hey, we’re going to have days when we have even extra people above and beyond the ones needed for the ambulance and we’re going to take (that) extra person or persons and put a fourth person on a pumper then — probably at a place where obviously there’s not an ambulance and there’s not a paramedic on the truck at the time, probably something like — such as House 6 down Telegraph …

“If we add up all those numbers where Steve talks about the extra days where we’ll have a person on the shift — this is hiring the nine people — we’re well over a hundred people right there … So I think that we’re going to have a tremendous increase in the coverage, not just on the ambulance but also by the fourth person on a pumper,” Hilmer said.

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