March 27--BRIGHAM CITY -- The city fire department's 66 firefighters are going from paid on-call status to part-time employees, to meet growing call volumes and avoid the costs of the Affordable Care Act.
"It's due," said City Attorney Kirk Morgan. "Everyone acknowledges it's due. We've had a huge increase in service calls from ten years ago."
Most of the increase is in ambulance runs for an aging population of retiring baby boomers, said Jim Buchanan, city emergency services director. "That's our changing demographic."
The city's five ambulances also serve much of the unincorporated area of Box Elder County, as well as Perry and Willard and other cities, Buchanan said. Of the city's 66 firefighters, he said, 54 are also EMTs.
Of the 2,775 service calls a year to the department, he said, 2,400 are ambulance runs and 375 are fire responses.
That's up, he said, more than 1,100 calls total from 10 years ago.
The volume is keeping the on-call crews busy to the point they are approaching the 30 hours a week threshold where the Affordable Care Act would force the city to provide health care insurance, which officials said the city cannot afford at well over $250,000 in the July 1 fiscal year.
As is with the change to part-time status, the cost to the coming budget will be over $140,000, they said, to what is currently a $1.2 million budget.
"We're growing too fast," Buchanan said. "We've known it was coming but we didn't think it would get here this fast."
Among the county's other fire departments, Tremonton fields three ambulances, Buchanan said, while Fielding, Plymouth, Snowville, and Park Valley deploy one each.
Schedules are currently being tweaked to staff the city's fire station at 4th West and Forest Street with each firefighter likely to work two 12-hour shifts a week.
An additional 12 to 15 firefighters will also be hired to keep all the crews under the Affordable Care Act ceiling.
Most of the firefighters have other full- or part-time jobs, Buchanan said, and the goal is for scheduling to prevent the loss of those jobs. "So far so good," he said.
"They'll make more money from the city," Morgan said, "but their schedules won't be as flexible."
Contact reporter Tim Gurrister at 801-625-4238, [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @tgurrister.
Copyright 2014 - Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah
