Council Clears the Air with Fire Dept in Budget Workshop

Last night’s budget workshop cleared the smoke on at least one potential budget hotpoint, the matter of restructuring the Rye Fire and Police Department organizational chart by creating a Public Safety Commissioner to oversee both– as well as how to manage other upcoming internal challenges for the fire department – is not yet clear enough for members of the City Council to move ahead with scheduling a public hearing on the  position as was previously anticipated.

City manager Scott Pickup had proposed changing the current structure of the Rye Fire Department so that both the professional and volunteer members would directly report to the City Manager. In addition, Pickup proposes a single Public Safety Commissioner oversee both the fire and police departments. The change would require a change in the City Charter, and according to Pickup, would result in savings for the city as well as less bureaucracy in governance of the department.

“Time is not our ally,” said Pickup. The approaching March deadline for adoption of a budget for fiscal year 2012, means the council must act quickly to make decisions about the structural change, according to Pickup.

 While the paid members of the fire department seem open to the proposition, there has been push back from representatives of the volunteer fire corps.  

“There’s no checkbook in the firehouse,” said Senior Fire Warden Richard Barber.

Expressing skepticism about a need to alter the relation between the Board of Fire Wardens and the City Council defined in the 1940 city charter, Barber argued no evidence had even been produced that any fiscal savings would be realized by the merger proposed by Pickup to the paid and volunteer fire corps management.

After Barber expressed concern that changes to the advisory relationship between the Board of Fire Wardens and the City Council, that he said had existed for more than 125 years, including the codification into the city charter, would be fixing a problem that wasn’t broken, Mayor Doug French said that public hearing on creation of the new commissioner position would be pushed back to January to allow more opportunity for study and discussion.  

Councilman Joe Sack said that he would work with Councilwoman Catherine Parker to expedite a report that would explore not only the current structure and challenges of the Rye Fire Department but also a range of options- including the creation of the Public Safety Commissioner- to effectively address the certain constraints that will be brought on by the tax levy cap on the city budget, potential overburdening of responsibility on current fire officials and a probably expansion of requirements from legislation pushed by fire insurance lobbyists at the state level.

Fire Warden James Finnerman extended an invitation to the city manager to attend an upcoming meeting and talk to the volunteer firefighters about the merits of his case for a single commissioner and change to the current advisory board relationship which Pickup accepted. 

Chief George Hogben told the council the department appears to be on trend for approximately 900 fire calls this year- ranging from actual fires to calls for medical assistance and alarm response. Approximately 50 of 1000 calls in 2010 were actual fires according to data presented to the council by the fire department.

In addition to Chief Hogben, the council also talked extensively with Barry Nechis, a New Rochelle Fire Department captain who has also done extensive consulting on fire department consolidation and governance. Nechis was at the workshop at the behest of the paid firefighters and briefed the council about upcoming legisation fire insurance lobbies are pushing in all 50 states that will likely pressure local fire departments to shift the number and ratio of professional and volunteer firefighters that must respond to fire calls to maintain municipal ratings and hold insurance premiums.