By Glenn Hicks

Staffing cut to P.A. Fire Department

Nov 13, 2018 | 4:00 PM

The Prince Albert Fire Department (PAFD) will be down one full-time firefighter for next year as the city looks to tighten its challenging budget situation.

The city said the move would be a one-year trial while the union representing firefighters suggested it did not come as a surprise.

Mayor Greg Dionne said they’ll reduce one of the four platoons by one person. That would leave the department with three 11-person platoons and one with 12.

“We’re going to monitor that to see what it does on overtime and if it works then we’ll look at the rest,” Dionne told paNOW. “But it was a joint effort and we consulted and listened to the union as well.”

The city’s management said the minimum staffing for a platoon is eight people so additional employees might be needed to be called in on occasions.

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Dionne said the union was “very good to negotiate with” in recent years and he thanked them for coming up with good ideas on how to cut costs.

The city’s manager Jim Toye said the move to cut the position was done with cost-saving in mind but stressed it did not compromise safety.

“We will look at the financial side, but we do not want to put at risk anyone’s property or any person in our city,” he said. “We want to make sure we still provide top level professional firefighting services and we’re still confident we can do that.”

Toye said the savings for not filling the vacant position would be around $130,000 and there were various options on how the department staffing would be reduced, including not replacing people who were set to retire or cutting back on the existing part-time staffing hours. That was yet to be determined, he said.

Meanwhile, the union which represents the firefighters said while it was unfortunate the city decided to cut jobs the union was “made very aware of the constraints that would be placed on administration and city council with the 2019 budget.”

“While a reduction in staffing is never ideal, we look forward to working with the city in finding ways to efficiently run the fire department, in ways that does not put firefighters lives, nor citizens lives, at risk,” Chris Bourdon, President of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 510, told paNOW in an email.

While the department will go with one less firefighter in 2019, the senior leadership is also under review following the departure of Chief Jason Everitt last summer. Everitt moved away to take the chief job in Melfort. The city’s 2017 financials showed Everitt earned over $154,000 that year and he was described as one of the best leaders the city had.

The mayor said the city was now trying a two deputy-chief model with one handling operations and the other looking after administration.

“They seem to be working together, and we’re going to leave that for a while and see how that works,” Dionne said.

glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter:@princealbertnow