05-04-2015 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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6/2/2014 Application Number: EMW-2011-FF-00724 attending more events, and so on. Though this has brought in a few candidates, it has not been what we were expecting. The problem is, we are doing it alone and that costs more money. As a county in general, we have seen significant decreases (up to 20%) in budgets. Because of the loss of dollars, the line items we use to have for recruiting is now used to repair gear, tires, and tools. The majority of the funds for the fire departments within Anoka County come from property taxes. Anoka County has seen a 20-30% decrease in home values over the past 4 years and taxes are based on those values. Because the value is down, so is the tax base and that money has been going to general expenditures throughout the cities. We know we are not alone when we say "there simply is no money" to implement a county -wide plan such as the one we are proposing. Some of the smaller cities are currently relying on gambling sales to keep their fleet going. We have seen less donations and overall budget increases. The Centennial Fire District is an exception due to the strong demand to maintain a viable volunteer staff. Unlike cities in other states, Minnesota firefighters are predominantly volunteers. The cities in Anoka County and the State cannot afford a fulitime model unless they significantly increased taxes and that would be a unforeseeable challenge. The funds from the grant would allow us to keep our line items low so that less of a financial impact would be placed on the rest of the community. Federal funds would provide an immediate relief to all Anoka County communities and allow us to focus on a strong recruitment and retention plan. *Element #4 - Cost/Benefit (10%): This statement should explain, as clearly as possible, what benefits your department and/or your community will realize if the project described is funded (i.e. anticipated savings and/or efficiencies). Is there a high benefit for the cost incurred? Are the costs reasonable? Provide justification for the budget items relating to the cost of the requested items. Over 34% of the firefighters within Anoka County will leave within the next four years due to attrition and retirements. The loss of these firefighters will have a significant impact on the daily operation and response of the all fire departments in our county. During the daytime hours, we often rely on strong mutual aid and auto aid agreements to meet the NFPA 1720 standard. Even with those agreements, there are times when we are unable to meet the ' requirement at all. Finding people in the daytime hours is challenging. The benefit of this entire grant request is that there is a PLAN! With the assistance of federal funds, we will be able to implement it. Without it, we will continue to piece meal the process and hope that we can find enough people to join us. There is a significant cost benefit to this recruitment and retention plan. If the request of $1,157,491 were funded over a four-year period, each community would essentially receive $13,780 per year for recruitment efforts. Because each fire department will need an average of 3.68 new firefighters per year, the annual cost for each firefighter would be $3,744. That cost includes training and testing to firefighter level I-11 and emergency medical technician. Each new recruit will receive a full set of personal protective gear, books and a $500 incentive to complete the academy. If you add all that up alone, the total cost of that would be $4,775 for each firefighter. The savings to the communities equals $1,031 for each firefighter and $243,316 for the entire county over the same timeframe. The county would see a benefit of having one person as the point of contact focusing only on recruitment and retention issues. This would allow all of the county departments to come to a standard hiring model and assist everyone in recruiting good candidates. It will reduce time and effort on an already strained effort and give everyone the tools they need to promote recruitment around the county. A common training academy will allow all of us to plan our academy date around a planned hiring date. This will allow us to send a large number of people through our academy and assure they are trained to the proper NFPA standards. The academy will also allow us to train our new firefighters on the common county issues and standards as well. For the first time, we would have new recruits training with others from across the county. Often times we do not see this unless there is a large incident in the area. Combining all of our training at one location allows all mutual and auto aid recruits to build a strong network and relationship prior to arriving at their stations. This will allow for better communications and working relationships in the future amongst all mutual and auto aid companies. The benefit of having recruitment trailers that can be pulled around the county and beyond is exciting. We envision these trailers to go to all public events with a common county theme about the fire service. How many times do you go to an event and people ask you if another agency is hiring? Most firefighters do not know. By adding trailers in �.K.....II .;,..... m ,,,,. a„.Gi.er-..ntlfir,, nthenicorr,?nlli.nnti,.annninrinr .nn ien7nrinf-fnitaknew, n,,n-JureFM1N-7M1-rF-M77d 9.1P11