GREEN COVE SPRINGS – The county’s Fire and Rescue Department is feeling the same pinch as the Sheriff’s Office, but a $3.5 million budget increase could stop the bleeding.

Throughout the 2021-22 Board of County Commissioners budgeting process, CCSO has received much of the spotlight. Sheriff Michelle Cook wanted significant increases to pay employees more, create more raises and repair and expand the county’s jail. However, CCFR is in need of some financial love, too.

“The overall figure on the budget summary we asked for was about $3.5 million,” Assistant County Manager and acting Fire Chief, David Motes, said. “That is centered around being able to be competitive with outside organizations. We’re experiencing almost identical problems to CCSO.”

He said the reason CCSO has probably taken so much of the budgeting spotlight because CCSO’s problems likely are bigger. One difference between the two departments’ problems is that CCSO has no phased approach to pay and raises. CCFRD already does have that. Motes said CCSO has to bring employees up to the market minimum and then create a payment plan. He said CCFR already has that system in place and that this year’s budget increase is “about stopping the bleeding.”

Motes said 289 people have been hired since 2009 and that number is so large because of how many employees CCFR has lost. He said the department’s problem isn’t the starting salaries offered, but rather, the pay that’s offered three to five years in. That’s when most employees that want to leave CCFR do leave and they often go to neighboring departments like St. Johns.

Every time somebody leaves CCFR, especially three to five years in, money is theoretically lost. Motes said every employee gets non-reusable protective equipment, training and more. When they leave, that money spent on those things essentially becomes lost money. That’s why the $3.5 million budget increase is targeting employee salaries. CCFRD needs to keep its three- to five-year employees happy and the root of them leaving at that point is often because of pay.

“We might have a competitive starting salary, but we can’t compete a few years in,” Motes said. “Our highest competitor is probably St. Johns. People might leave here as an engineer [the second rank for a firefighter to achieve] to become just a firefighter at St. Johns, even if they lost money or don’t gain any because when they become an engineer there, they’ll probably make more money. That’s where we’re bleeding.”

Motes said the department has a three-fold process to fixing things: keep employees here, increasing the department’s employee numbers and create enough fire stations to house them.

That touches on another problem CCFR is experiencing.

“We are 127 firefighters down from where we should be based on state standards,” Motes said. “We need to be at 1.52 firefighters per 1,000 people in the population. We are dramatically beneath that.”

He said fire stations are severely understaffed and as a result, people are overworked due to necessary mandatory overtime and the like. Then there’s the pandemic, which has seen the department experienced a 20% increase in call volume so now the department has a higher workload and less manpower. Motes said the department wants to bring in more employees to match that workload.

However, when it does that, then they face a housing problem. Many of the county’s official fire stations are old volunteer stations repurposed as full fire stations. They don’t feature everything necessary to house additional employees, though, as a result.

The new budget’s $3.5 million increase goes straight to salary but the BCC’s 2021-22 budget also includes funding for five new fire stations. In fact, the Green Cove Springs department will be moved to what is the current site of the county’s health department. Once the health department moves to its new building, the Green Cove Springs station will be built at the old health department property. It’s the first new fire station of five the county will build.

Motes said fixing all of these problems will allow the station to hit the state standard ratio it’s supposed to strive for. The county is also supposed to arrive at calls within four minutes 90% of the time, but right now, their percentage is about 25%. He said the department can arrive at the first call a station receives within four minutes 90% of the time, but when that station receives a second call, that’s where the response time stretches beyond four minutes.

“You can’t just attack one thing here,” Motes said. “It’s all of it and combined, we will get better response times and a more highly efficient and effective field force to meet all of the county’s needs. You see this train coming down the tracks – the county’s growth – and when you’re already deficient, it creates a hill too big for that train to climb...and that’s why we had to get aggressive with this budget.”