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continued to increase and have reached a point where it is no longer sustainable for part time <br />employees to manage. <br />The emergency services are the most demanding of volunteer activities today. The physical and time <br />demands associated with training; responding to incidents; maintaining facilities, apparatus, and <br />equipment are grueling if not managed properly. In today’s hectic world, strong leadership is required to <br />make the fire department that will attract volunteers. Fire departments can no longer count on the <br />children of current members following in their parent’s footsteps. Nor can they count on a continuous <br />stream of community people eager to donate their time and energy to their local volunteer fire <br />department. Adding to the problem, departments cannot rely on members staying active in the <br />volunteer fire service for long periods of time. <br />The continued increasing difficulty in recruitment and retention of day time available firefighters has put <br />a strain on the day time available staff and the department response has suffered. Therefore the fire <br />department day time staffing needs to grow with the growing community. <br />Staffing Plan <br />The Fire Chief recommends that the department moves forward and hire a full time Fire Chief. This <br />position is needed with the rapidly growing community and the many hours spent on administrative <br />duties to keep the department operating. Routinely the part time chief spends numerous evenings and <br />weekends at the fire station, working on department operations. Trying to manage and run the <br />department while still working 40+ hours per week at a full time job, while also managing family <br />obligations, leaves little time for the chief to spend the needed time and effort to effectively and <br />efficiently manage a department of 25+ people. The fire chief routinely spends numerous hours during <br />their normal job work hours, conducting fire department business. Whether it is responding to emails in <br />a timely fashion, or responding to staff or citizen inquiries. Additionally, the fire chief is unable to work <br />collaboratively with other city staff or area fire departments. With the fire chief unable meet during the <br />day when other staff are working, this limits the collaboration the fire department can have with others. <br />This also limits the fire chief’s ability to effectively and efficiently manage people during the day. <br />Additionally during this time, some salaried and hourly staff will need to remain to manage the <br />administrative work of the department. The duties of 11 different people would certainly overwhelm <br />the daily work of just 1 full time Chief. Therefore even after a full time chief position is filled, the salaries <br />of the Deputy Chief and the Assistant Chief should remain. Even though some of the duties that the <br />Deputy Chief and Assistant Chief are assigned would be completed by the Full time Chief along with the <br />duties of the Fire Marshal, Administrative Captain and Administrative Lieutenant. Duties that the Safety <br />Captain, Training Captain, Safety Lieutenant, Training Lieutenant and Chief Engineer would need to be <br />absorbed, and the Deputy Chief and Assistant Chief would continue to assist the Fire Chief in completion <br />of these duties. There would also be 2 Captains and 2 Lieutenants that would assist when needed with <br />the administrative duties. The Captains and Lieutenants would be paid by the hour for their time spent <br />working on administrative duties. By taking the extra work load off many of the officers and allowing <br />them to respond to emergency calls, training drill, community events, and small amounts of <br />administrative work as needed, is a path to help sustain the paid on call model in the City of Hugo for <br />years to come. <br />