Chase to chief: save $1 million
Published Friday June 26th, 2009
City Deputy mayor wants to see benefits from review of the city's fire services
SAINT JOHN - Deputy Mayor Stephen Chase says he wants the city to save $1 million or more on fire services next year, otherwise a review of the department will have been a waste of time.
"This is probably the biggest operational review the city will undertake," said Chase, referring to the program common council signed off on earlier this week.
"What we need are ideas. It's not too difficult to understand what's being delivered and the cost. But what I'm looking for are innovative ideas on how we can still deliver a good fire service, meeting the needs of this community, but still save some money."
Fire Chief Rob Simonds is in charge of conducting the review, something that concerns Chase. He says Simonds has never shown a willingness to find big savings.
"The chief had every opportunity to do this before and he hasn't," Chase said, mentioning that the fire department's strong union culture makes it difficult for any manager looking at cutbacks. "It would likely be very difficult for him to introduce any ideas that would see any impact on his firefighters."
But Simonds says he understands what council wants and will follow the instructions it gave him.
The chief said in an interview that the review will for the first time outline the exact cost of every service provided by the fire department and how important it is. Once council sees the list, it will be able to decide what should stay or go.
"At no point did (council) say, 'Come back with a recommendation to, say, reduce your budget by x-y-z,' " Simonds said. "What they've asked me to do is identify the options, put a dollar value to them, and tell us what the implications are for each of them from the most significant, to the least significant."
The motion passed by council in May states the review should consider consolidating fire stations, introducing some volunteer firefighters, changing the response policy and reducing medical assistance calls, among other ideas. The politicians also wanted to know how the changes could affect residential insurance rates.
Coun. Gary Sullivan says he wants to see savings in every department, but pointed out that the $20.3-million fire service eats up a significant portion of the $127-million city budget. He said he's willing to wait and see what the findings are before he speculates where savings can be found.
"I don't have that level of expertise to know," he said.
"But the city doesn't have an unlimited chequing account. We need to be prepared to make hard decisions if necessary."
On Monday, council agreed to hire SMC Risk Management Services to conduct part of the review for $40,000. The chief clarified in the interview that the company was hired because council wanted to know how changes to fire service would affect insurance rates. He said the company wasn't hired because management at the fire department was too tied up with other work. SMC owns the proprietary rights to the data it uses for its insurance advice.
"This component, this pillar of the study, can only be done by the insurance industry themselves," Simonds said."They can quantitatively measure what we need, measure what we have and say, 'You know what, you have way too much fire protection for what you need' or conversely, 'You have too little.' At least what you have is a baseline assessment that's going to allow council to make informed decisions."
Staff at the fire department has been busy doing natural gas pipeline and LNG training in preparation for the big industrial project that's coming online at Mispec. That's why Simonds asked council to push the review's completion date from August to the end of September.
A steering committee, made up of one councillor from each of the four wards, will soon be in place to guide the fire chief in the review. The nominating committee - made up of the deputy mayor, Mayor Ivan Court and Councillor Joe Mott - is expected to meet Monday morning to consider appointments.
"They can provide me greater focus because we're talking about delivering this thing in roughly 90 to 100 days," Simonds said of the steering committee.
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The firefighters in Saint John are plain good. They're on the ice, they're in the water at Saint's Rest, response time seems excellent, no labour strife (that I know of), they do a lot of charity work, and it always seems that they get pretty well all of the people out of fire. You also don't seem to hear about them falling through floors or getting trapped.
The Fire Department is something that works and that we ALL benefit - if you want to make a cut, cut something that only benefits the few.
My main concern is the tone of the debate from firefighters. As soon as the questions become about objective, measurable factors, things get bogged down. The responses become emotion based, using fear as a tactic. None of us want to have a fire, or to wait for a response, but why not compare apples to apples and see how Saint John stacks up. Using the responders per square km is fine as part of the calculation, but if that is done, population density needs to be measured too. There is a lot of empty land... If the only reason to have the first responder be fire is their convenient locations, please tell me how much it would cost to park 1 or 2 ambulances around town, and compare this number to the fire service. Use facts, not emotion please.
There are ambulances parked around town. Saint John, on average,has 4 ambulances stationed in the city. 1 in the valley, i think, and 1 in the parish of Simonds.
So when you think of there call volume, apporx 12000 calls a year just for the city alone then you run out of ambulances pretty quick. Remember Saint John Fire only respond to approx 30% of the total 911 calls for ambulance.
As ambulances in the city become unavailable they then draw ambulances in from outside the city. Waiting for an ambulance from KV is not uncommon, and occasionally your waiting for one from Hampton. That is fact.
The idea of simply adding more ambulances simply will not ever happen. The provincial government wouldn't do it when they ran the service they then contracted the service out to Blue Cross who now runs it as a for profit service. Ask any EMT and they'll tell you the ambulance service took a huge step backwards when Blue Cross took over. cont
Our 2 outer stations (2 and 7) cover the outer most areas of the city.
Engine 2 ( for medicals and MVA's)is responsible for the lochlomond road out to the city limits, the Golden Grove road out to the city limits, Old rothesay road to the city limits as well as the eastbound highway to the city limits. I have no idea how many people reside in those areas. In case of a fire the next closet engine comes from bayside dr, the ladder truck from Carmarthen street and the rescue from the north end.
Engine 7 is responsible for the westfield road out to the sobeys in Grand Bay, to the end of Lorneville and the highway to the border of Grand Bay. In case of fire the closet engine come from the lower west side, and the ladder and rescue are coming from the north end station.
according to the ward maps the wards they cover both have a pop. of 16000. How many in the outskirts I don't know.
I'm certainly not against the F.D responding to emergency's when there is no ambulance within range.
I think the City should look within the City for the cuts. Wages, expenditures, expense accounts,etc,are the places that require the cuts, along with making sure ALL business interests in the city are paying their taxes. That includes the Irving interests. I'm not against the Irvings, just against the idea of them not paying their fair share, and asking for deals. We have out priorities a little mixed up don't we council?
The large businesses are wasting money left and right, and it's falling on the taxpayers. Ask their employees about the perks..they cost thousands per year. We all pay for this in the end. I know this is not the issue at hand, but I am so tired of all the waste..including the waste of yet another study paid for by the taxpayers.