By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
January 25, 2012

The Kansas City manager’s proposal to cut 105 fire fighting positions is drawing fire.

During a Jan. 18 Public Safety and Emergency Services Committee meeting, board member John Sharp voiced his dissatisfaction with the proposal.

“I don’t think any department should be exempt from possible cuts, but I personally think that going from four people (on a pumper truck) to three people is a huge step backward in the nature of public safety,” Sharp said. “I think it puts fire fighters at the scene in a terrible position.”

City Manager Troy Schulte released his budget recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year on Jan. 17.

“This budget reflects the lingering effects of the recession and a general economic malaise, which continues to hamper a rebound in the City’s tax base,” he wrote in his budget proposal. “It is my opinion, based on national data being released, that true recovery to calendar year 2008 levels of employment and growth will not occur for at least three more fiscal years.”

Overall, Schulte is proposing to eliminate 162 city employee positions, 105 of which are fire fighters.

In his proposal, Schulte defended the need to trim the fire department by saying the cost of public safety is the “single largest expense of the City’s General Fund,” comprising 57 percent of the General Fund.

Peronnel costs continue to rise while revenues languish, he said. That game of catch up has led to fewer available resources for “other city priority areas and crowded out other funds available,” like the one-quarter cent sales tax to fund fire service operations like facility maintenance and equipment repair and replacement, he said.

However, Sharp said there are other ways to save money besides reducing fire department personnel.

In his budget proposal, Schulte pointed out that fire suppression-only calls had declined by more than 70 percent during the last 10 years.

Kansas City Fire Department Chief Smokey Dyer confirmed the statistics during the public safety meeting. This fiscal year, KCFD responded to more than 63,000 incidents with only 1,350 being fire related. However, the number of EMS incidents continues to increase due to factors like an aging population, Dyer said.

Sharp stressed that while all fire fighters are cross trained as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), not all EMT’s are trained to be a fire fighter.

Eliminating 105 positions would force KCFD to revert back to three fire fighters on a pumper truck, thus violating national fire protection standards and Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, Dyer said.

Although a number of major cities don’t comply with those rules, Sharp argued that ten years ago, Kansas City made a conscious decision to meet those standards and increased its fire fighting force.

Switching back to three on a truck would not only violate national standards, it would potentially force fire fighters to choose between rescuing a victim inside a structure or fighting the fire itself until more trucks arrived on scene. If there’s no positive identification that a person is inside the structure, then fire fighters must wait until more help arrives before entering the structure, Dyer said.

Despite the proposed cuts, Dyer said he and his staff will ensure the fire department continues to function well.

“We will build and create a fire department with whatever the policy leaders decide that Kansas City can afford,” Dyer said. “We’ll do the best job with whatever money is allocated to us.”