N.Y. Department Considers Students to Fill Ranks

ONEONTA, N.Y. -- The Oneonta Fire Department has exceeded its overtime budget for 2011 by 50 percent.

With a lack of part-time firefighters a major factor, the city may look to regional community colleges for recruitment, Mayor Dick Miller and Fire Chief Patrick Pidgeon said.

The city has so far spent $77,000 beyond the $154,000 it budgeted for fire department overtime costs for 2011, Chamberlain Meg Hungerford said.

The city regularly tracks overtime expenses in the police and fire departments, and in October, the mayor convened a task force to look at staffing and other issues facing the OFD.

That task force has so far met four times, Miller said Wednesday.

"The next step is to outline alternative strategies on dealing with the issue," Miller said.

The mayor said he expects the task force will issue a report to the Common Council by the end of next month after its next meeting.

A decrease in the pool of part-time firefighters is an obstacle facing the department at a time when call volume is increasing, Miller said.

The task force includes the mayor, Hungerford, Personnel Director Kathy Wolverton, Pidgeon, one of the four captains, First Ward Alderman Maureen Hennessy, Fourth Ward Alderman Mike Lynch and several firefighters.

Pidgeon said the effort has so far been positive, and the mayor and other city officials have been told of the training and duty requirements for firefighters.

"We know what we do," Pidgeon said.

Call firefighters are typically called for service during emergencies, while part-timers are called in to fill out shifts when a full-time firefighter is out sick, on vacation or injured.

The department had 12 or 13 part-time firefighters and eight to 10 call firefighters in January 2010. There are now just three part-timers and eight call firefighters.

Pidgeon said demographic changes, a desire of young people to move away from Oneonta and more extensive training requirements have thinned the ranks of part-time and call firefighters. In the 1980s, there were nearly 40 call firefighters, according to Pidgeon.

Although they are subject to civil service requirements, full-time firefighters are recruited from the ranks of the call and part-time firefighters.

"There's no one in this immediate area that is coming into the business," Pidgeon said.

It may prove fruitful to recruit part-timers on community college campuses where there are students majoring in emergency response fields, he said.

Pidgeon said he would like to see the city hire four full-time firefighters -- one for each shift. But he said he understands the city is facing fiscal pressure.

"Obviously, that's a huge budgetary commitment," Pidgeon said.

The city used some of its budget for part-time firefighters and its general fund balance to pay for a $100,000 budget transfer to augment the original $154,000 overtime budget, Hungerford said.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service