Charlotte County, Fla. Dept. Learns Volunteer Firefighters Aren't Free

It seemed like a good idea at first -- something that could spark savings for the county.

But as the Charlotte County Commission is learning, using volunteer firefighters to supplement the county's 227-person fire department may be more costly than it's worth.

For starters, it would cost a whopping $83,000 to outfit just 19 state-certified fire volunteers, said Fire Chief Dennis DiDio.'And if the operation doesn't go, a lot of that (equipment and gear) is not usable because of sizes and different things like that,' DiDio told commissioners recently as he updated them on efforts to recruit and train volunteer firefighters to serve at any of the county's 16 fire stations.

Add in the price of background checks, health physicals and the time it would take to train volunteers to Charlotte County standards, and the cost to trim money from the fire and emergency medical services' $46.3 million combined budget for fiscal 2012-13 goes up, county officials said.

'So it's not free is the point,' quipped Commissioner Stephen R. Deutsch.

Despite the chief's report, commissioners said they still want staff to look at ways to incorporate volunteers into the department. According to DiDio, recruitment efforts started last year after a prior commission tasked the chief with looking into the possibility of using volunteer firefighters as a way to cut costs in the fire department.

In September, DiDio put a call out for volunteers, and 32 applicants responded. The prospects had background checks done -- at the county's expense -- and 'out of the 32, 15 had felony convictions,' DiDio said.

'I opened it back up and took in four or five more people, so I'm up to 19 people right now,' he added.

Of the 19 prospective volunteers, 15 have full-time jobs, and work between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., DiDio said. Thirteen live in Charlotte County, six live outside the county; six work in the county and nine work elsewhere.

'So we looked at it and said, 'OK, where are these people going to put the time in to work at the fire department?'' DiDio said. 'At night or weekends. Well, who's going to do it at night and ride along when they have to work at 8 o'clock in the morning? These are just some of things that we're trying to get through.'

Of the 27,000 calls the fire department received in 2012, DiDio said, about 4,000 or 5,000 were fire-related calls and about 18,000 were medical.

At the moment, the recruitment is on hold as county administration officials and the fire chief await results of a survey that was sent out to neighboring counties asking about their volunteer firefighter programs.

Preliminary responses, DiDio said, seem to show what appears to be happening throughout the region and much of the country: most volunteer programs are going up in smoke. The ones that remain tend to be located in rural areas or used for large-gathering events, he said.

Locally, the turnover rate for volunteer firefighters is as high as 50 percent in some counties, DiDio said.

'All of these volunteers that are on this list are certified (fire and emergency medical technicians),' he said. 'They are either on the list of other departments trying to get on or they are waiting for other jobs to come forward.'

In other words, it may not be worth the time and money to equip and train volunteers, if they simply are waiting for a paying job.

'I just want everybody to understand (and) to see the whole picture,' DiDio told commissioners.

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