Fla. county wary of accepting firefighter staffing grant

By Stephen Hudak
The Orlando Sentinel

TAVARES, Fla. — Lake County must decide soon whether to accept a federal grant to hire firefighters.

The decision on the $1.3 million in "free" money is not as simple as it might seem.

"Please don't take the easy way out: buy something today and pay for it tomorrow," County Commissioner Jimmy Conner cautioned fellow commissioners during budget workshops this week. "I'm concerned about the long-term financial commitment."

In February, Lake County Public Safety's fire-rescue division won a four-year grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that would allow the county to hire a dozen firefighters, Deputy Chief John Jolliff said.

The grant would reimburse the new hires' salaries and benefits in diminishing amounts.

The county, which must agree to assume the full financial brunt of the 12 firefighters in fiscal year 2013-14, must decide by an Oct. 30 deadline set by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The firefighters' wages and salaries are estimated at $691,000 a year — not including overtime for wildfires or other unforeseen emergencies, according to budget calculations.

"My question is this: How many firefighters do we really need?" Conner said during a workshop, which also touched on the issues of public-safety overtime and consolidating emergency services.

The fire-rescue division's 184 uniformed personnel provide firefighting and emergency medical services in unincorporated Lake, an area of 1,100 square miles populated by an estimated 200,000 residents.

Lake firefighters respond to a blaze once every eight hours and to a medical emergency every 48 minutes, Jolliff said, quoting department statistics culled from 47,000 service calls during the past three years.

If the commission rejects the federal money, known as the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant, the county will not staff the new Paisley fire station, Public Safety Director Gary Kaiser said.

"It means we would have built a firehouse for $1.4 million that we can't open," Kaiser said.

The new Paisley station, slated to open next summer, is expected to reduce emergency response times in northeast Lake from 15 minutes to less than five. Six of the new hires would be assigned to Paisley.

The other six are expected to serve the county as "floaters" who could be shuffled from station to station to plug temporary staffing holes caused by vacations, illness or family leave. Those hires would reduce the division's overtime costs by as much as $650,000 next year, Jolliff said.

But even with the federal grant, the county would have to pay about $2.2 million during the next five years to equip, train and compensate the new hires. The firefighters' starting salary and benefit package is about $47,000 a year.

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