The San Angelo City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to allow the Fire Department’s application for a federal grant to help fund staffing for the planned fire station in the city’s growing southwest area.
Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency aid local fire departments with funded positions to help maintain staffing levels.
The city is preparing for the future construction of Fire Station No. 9 in an area where response times for both fire and medical emergencies are currently longer than national standards.
“Why the need? Why the need for the additional personnel? As the city starts to expand, we recognized a service delivery gap in the southwest region of our town, and excess response time to that area,” San Angelo Fire Chief Patrick Brody told the council. “So we’ve identified an area that needs a new fire station.”
Fully staffing the new station would require 20 new employees, which includes fire engine and ambulance crews, operating in three shifts.
Brody explained that, in order to cover time off, vacations, and sick leave for the new firehouse, extra personnel were required to make sure the station was fully staffed.
“There’s a metric that we use — we have three personnel on the engine every day, three different shifts that’s nine people, plus an ambulance, that’s two more people every day, that’s six more people every day, to a total of 15,” he said.
“Industry standards don’t just fill for the vacancies; you have to account for vacations and backfill, so that metric we use is 1.3-per person that you need for minimum staffing, and 1.3 by 15 is 19.6, and that [six-tenths] of a person is really hard to find, so we go ahead and round that up to 20.”
If awarded, the SAFER Grant would reduce the city’s cost to hire those new employees. The grant provides cost-sharing over three years — FEMA would cover 75 percent of eligible staffing costs in the first two years and 35 precent in the third year.
“The beautiful part of the SAFER grant is it is federally funded and it’s a cost share grant that will offset some of the expenses to the citizens,” Brody said.
“In our first year, if we’re awarded the grant, FEMA will cover over $800,000 worth of expenses for personnel.
“The second year, it bumps up to [$1.77 million], and then — year three — it’s a decrease contribution from FEMA, and an increase from the city, but FEMA is still covering $502,000, for a net total savings of taxpayer dollars of $2.3 million.”
Without the grant, the total cost of staffing over three years would be nearly $4 million.
With the grant, that total drops to about $1.65 million, saving the city an estimated $2.38 million.
Why We Need It
According to officials, response times are a key concern.
According to Brody, the National Fire Protection Association recommends response times of 4-minutes-or-less for fire and emergency medical calls.
The area that would be served by the new station is well outside that mark.
“In this area of town that I am discussing, we’re at a 7.5-minute response time,” Brody said. “That is for EMS and fire response to that area. Some of those long response times in that area are what’s driving the average up, so whenever you reduce those long response times and bring those back into national standard, it only makes the average even better.”
Brody also pointed out that some homes in the Country Club Lake Estates neighborhood are more than 5 miles from the nearest fire station, which could impact insurance ratings.
“ISO, the Insurance Services Office, they mandate every structure in the city be within 5 miles of a fire station,” he said.
If the grant is awarded, the terms of acceptance and any budget decisions will return to council for approval.
