They deal with different areas in the public safety realm, but Mount Airy’s fire and police chiefs share a common need: more manpower.
In what could be considered two tales of the same city, Fire Chief Zane Poindexter is seeking the creation of more full-time positions for his department while Police Chief Dale Watson is concerned with filling vacant jobs already existing.
No slots have been added in the Mount Airy Fire Department for more than 15 years, Poindexter said during a city government planning retreat in late March when both he and Watson updated their respective operations along with other department heads.
Since then, major annexations occurred which increased the territory covered while not boosting personnel.
Of the more than 40 employees in the department, 37 are devoted to fire suppression — but only 20 of those are full-time firefighters, with the part-timers limited to 36 hours per month.
Push comes to shove at times with having enough personnel available during a fire, Poindexter said, which can be a factor with a two-in, two-out policy of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
It requires two firefighters to enter a burning building together to monitor each other’s whereabouts while extinguishing a blaze or rescuing someone, and two others outside to act in case the first two are endangered.
While OSHA rules do allow for a “ready rescue” by fewer personnel if a someone inside can be easily reached, generally “that’s a risk we’re not going to take,” Poindexter said of acting with less than the prescribed number.
Another problem occurs with having enough people to operate the city’s ladder truck in a safe manner. “That is a two-man job,” the chief said.
“We’re going to need more full-time staffing,” Poindexter said in looking ahead.
The fire official is not seeking to add 10 employees in a single year, for example, indicating that the need should be met on a gradual basis.
Keeping jobs filled in the department was a major problem until 2018, when raises were granted to bring Mount Airy firefighters’ pay to the statewide average in response to heavy turnover.
Though sporadic vacancies have occurred since, “it wasn’t the revolving door it had been,” Poindexter said in follow-up comments last Thursday.
Fire rating factor
The personnel numbers aren’t thought to be putting citizens or their property at risk, but one key area that can be impacted by this is the city’s fire-suppression rating, which affects their pocketbooks with insurance costs.
Mount Airy was notified last month that a Class 3 rating for its coverage district was being maintained, as certified by the N.C. Department of Insurance/Office of the State Fire Marshal after a strenuous evaluation process.
“It’s been a three since 1997,” Poindexter said of the ISO (Insurance Services Office) rating by which that entity classifies all fire departments in the country according to their suppression capabilities.
Poindexter has called Class 3 “a really good grade for a department our size.”
However, Mount Airy slipped to a score of 70.97 during its most recent evaluation, near the bottom end of the Class 3 scale that requires ones of 70 to 79.99. Its last grade from the process in 2014 was 72.3.
“Manpower is where we take the biggest hit,” the fire chief said regarding the certification procedure.
If Mount Airy’s fire rating drops to the next level, it would have a drastic impact on the cost of insuring both homes and businesses, but especially the latter due to the higher value of covering equipment or other assets involved.
Poindexter calculated one example in which a business in the city would face a $362 increase in annual insurance costs under the next-lowest rating (that would be a Class 4, with higher numbers meaning less proficiency and Class 1 the best available).
Police deal with shortage
Both Mount Airy’s fire and police chiefs are devoting more attention to personnel recruitment and retention to stabilize their ranks.
During the planning retreat, Chief Watson mentioned that a departmental meeting recently was held among police personnel aimed at identifying “who we are and where we want to be,” he said.
“We’re focused on tomorrow,” Watson added.
One of the goals of the Mount Airy Police Department along those lines is to become fully staffed, the chief said, a condition that has eluded it in recent years.
At full strength, the department has 42 sworn officers and 15 non-sworn employees.
It presently has five vacancies in the Patrol Division, four in communications and two in the Criminal Investigations Division.
Meanwhile the workload of criminal cases and traffic accidents handled by the department remains high, including more than 800 in the latter category last year.
In outlining recruitment challenges, the police chief says his department encounters difficulty in hiring younger people of “Generation Z” — born in 1997 and after.
Those individuals generally prefer shorter-term jobs, with only a small percentage desiring to work more than five years for the same employer, according to Watson.
And once officers come aboard, some discover that a law enforcement career is not what they expected, he said, such as requiring much paperwork and unique stresses.
The chief pointed out that one recruit started work on the same day that an officer-involved shooting occurred within the department, which apparently proved to be more than he could handle. That officer never came back for a second day.
COVID and social unrest also have complicated the equation in the past couple of years, Watson said. “The police paradigm is constantly changing.”
To meet the personnel challenges through increased recruitment and retention, the chief said incentives for training and education will be pursued along with a succession strategy. It is aimed at preparing replacements to step in to key positions when resignations or retirements occur to maintain the level of service to the public.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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