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The public safety director says reimbursement or benefits may need to be increased if the county is to meet its needs.
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 14, 2001
INVERNESS -- As the number of emergency calls increases and the firefighter force shrinks, officials are looking into ways to improve compensation for the volunteer firefighters.
One idea is to raise the firefighter reimbursement from $7.50 to $10 a call, and give fire chiefs $15 a call because they handle additional duties, county Public Safety Director Charles Poliseno said.
That idea is one of several that Poliseno's office is researching and is just beginning to discuss. Other ideas include providing some type of pension or property tax break for the volunteer firefighters.
It is up to the County Commission to decide during budget time whether to provide the extra funding for any new incentives for the volunteers, Poliseno said.
"We've got dwindling ranks, and we're trying to promote more folks to join the volunteer ranks," he said.
The reimbursement for Citrus County's firefighters has not been increased since 1987, when it went from $5 to $7.50, Poliseno said. Increasing the rate to $10 or $15 a call would cost the county an additional $100,000, he said.
The county can reimburse the volunteer firefighters for the gas they use to get to the fire station or the scene, and for any clothing that is lost or damaged as they battle a blaze, Poliseno said.
But the county cannot pay the volunteers for their time, Poliseno said, because the firefighters would then become county employees, entitled to benefits and subject to regulations under federal labor laws.
Poliseno has asked Assistant County Attorney Carl Kern to review the proposed rate increase to ensure that it would not turn the volunteers into paid firefighters in the eyes of the law. Such concerns prevented county officials from increasing the rates several years ago, Poliseno said.
Kern said he had not studied the proposal, but he did not think the volunteers would be considered paid employees if their reimbursement amounts went from $7.50 to $10 or $15 a call.
"We're not anywhere near that threshold," Kern said.
At last month's county goal-setting session, Commissioner Josh Wooten asked what it would take to increase the reimbursement amount to $10 a call, on par with Crystal River's reimbursement amount, which went from $10.90 to $11.31 a call last October.
The commissioners were looking for ways to better compensate the volunteers. Their figures showed that the force dropped from 400 to 235 firefighters during the past five years, while emergency calls went up 24.3 percent.
The need for firefighters will only become greater as the county continues to grow, especially if the state Fire Marshal's Office mandates the "two-in, two-out" rule. The rule is a federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration guideline that calls for at least five firefighters on the scene to battle structural fires: two to go in the blazing building, two waiting outside the building to help, and one running the water pump for the hose.
Commissioners last month showed no interest in a $2.4-million proposal by Poliseno to add 14 paid firefighter positions throughout the county to supplement the volunteers' efforts.
Instead, they batted around ideas to better reward the volunteers, perhaps with increased reimbursements or service pins like the ones county employees receive every five years.
But it is unclear how much of a difference such incentives would make. A copy of the 1987 JC Penney National Survey on Volunteerism, included in Poliseno's proposal for paid firefighters, shows that 79 percent of those who do not volunteer say it is because they lack the time.
Only 7 percent in the survey cited financial reasons for not volunteering.
The increased training requirements also make it difficult to retain volunteer firefighters, Fire Service Director Mike Schlaudraff said.
The volunteer firefighters must complete 160 hours of firefighter training, compared with 40 hours of such training five years ago, he said.
"That's out of our hands. The fire doesn't know any difference between the volunteer and the career firefighter," Schlaudraff said. "We can't set lower training standards because then we would be hurting ourselves and the citizens."