Consultant recommends adding fire department to town government

The Wake Forest Fire Department is “a training ground for other departments because it is not a part of the state retirement system,” said the consultant hired to examine whether the Town of Wake Forest should incorporate the fire department into its organization. The cost to train and equip a new firefighter is estimated at $50,000, and the department is losing 8 percent, roughly five or six, experienced firefighters each year to departments like the High Point fire department, which is part of the state retirement system.

For two hours Tuesday evening Gregory Grayson and Mike Varnell, both retired fire chiefs now working for Envirosafe, the firm the town hired to examine whether it should add the fire department to its organization, explained and detailed their study. The core finding: “It is the assessment team’s recommendation that in the best interest of the people of Wake Forest, the fire department become part of Wake Forest Town Government.”

Although pointing out that the “Wake Forest Fire Department is a progressive organization and is providing credible service to the people of Wake Forest,” the study says “the current systems are not sustainable long-term as the Town continues” to have rapid growth with increasing complexity.

The decision will have to be made soon to allow for nine months of preparation on many fronts to add the department beginning July 1, 2020. The town board will wait to hear from the fire department’s board of directors and their vote before taking a vote during the regular town board meeting on Sept. 17, later that month or in early October in a called meeting.

It will be expensive. The town has been paying 80 percent of the fire department’s budget with Wake County paying 20 percent. The current fire department budget is over $7.5 million. Envirosafe estimates the support cost over the next two years will be $359,535 and a separate increase of $988,970 will be felt in the next fiscal year, 2020-2021. (It was not clear how the report balanced what the town is now paying against future costs.)

“The total impact on the town budget would be approximately 3 cents on the tax rate,” the draft report presented Tuesday said. The current tax rate is 52 cents per $100 valuation with 11 cents of that dedicated to the fire department. The tax base is $5.65 billion. (The tax base will grow, but the town’s tax rate may be entirely different after the county-wide real estate appraisal in January 2020.)

The result will be a fire department better equipped, both in apparatus and personnel, to meet the needs of a growing town with larger, taller apartment buildings and more people and buildings. “The town is growing and the need is growing,” Grayson told Mayor Vivian Jones after the presentation and during the questions by town board members and some members of the fire department’s board of directors. He said the biggest change will be in the first year when the town has to balance the benefits, the pay scale and purchasing apparatus. The mayor asked if the town would have to pay the firefighters more than their current pay, and Grayson said he is not a compensation specialist.

Also, the study did not include the cost of Station #6 on the east side of town, but the study did say that Rolesville and Wake Forest could cooperate in building or operating a single joint station and staff near Averette Road and in the Burlington Mills Road area.

Commissioners Bridget Wall-Lennon and Brian Pate asked how to tell town residents they will pay more, and Grayson said the fire department gains efficiency, the ability to attract and retain firefighters and a higher service level. He also said they can say, This is our department and the current level of service and what it could be if we invest in the department and the safety of the people of the town.

Commissioner Liz Simpers said, “We simply cannot do nothing and our fire department

staffing and services will be taken care of. No matter what we decide about incorporating the department under the town’s umbrella, we have to address their needs and our staffing concerns with retention and appropriate compensation.”

Grayson and Varnell had praise for the fire department. When interviewed, the paid and volunteer firefighters said the department’s strength were the “quality of the personnel, the family culture, their commitment to training and the value of training, their aggressive firefighting tactics and having meaningful input” because they can offer suggestions directly to Chief Ron Early.

The gaps identified in the fire department are not being able to use the state retirement system, “recruitment and retention, apparatus maintenance, internal communication and voids in the organizational structure.” The fire department has almost no support personnel such as human resources and finance. The town board and fire board members also highlighted the high turnover and lack of support staff and identified a lack of diversity as a problem.

The study recommended an aggressive replacement plan for the fire department’s apparatus, including buying three new fire engines over the next five years and replacing one of the aerial trucks, the oldest, that is scheduled in the current budget. The old one can be kept as backup.

Also, equipment maintenance was noted as a big problem because, with a 38 percent increase in calls between 2013 and 2018, the trucks are often out on calls and maintenance has been neglected. The study recommends contracting with “new full-time service vendors to provide more efficient long-term repairs.

It also recommends many renovations costing about $1.5 million to Station #1 on Elm Avenue, which will be 40 years old by the time the work is completed in 2024. Other, less drastic, renovations and changes are recommended for the other fire stations, but Station #5 at Falls is treated differently. The study recommends staffing it only with volunteers to protect the 70 or so structures in its district and redeploying the part-time paid staff to other stations.

Staffing levels were addressed. “Seek to optimize the staffing that is currently provided and work towards adding enough firefighters to ensure that safe levels of Wake Forest firefighters can respond to and mitigate typical residential fires within the Town of Wake Forest. Given 4 engines and 2 ladders and a Battalion Chief, approximately 93 firefighters would be needed in Wake Forest.” The department now has about 70 firefighters. In addition, the study said, “As an example, a minimum of 27 firefighters is needed on scene at a basic garden type apartment fire according to national industry standards. Wake Forest will need to plan for more urban levels of staffing in the future.”

The study complimented the department on its ability to contain a fire within the room where it started 60 percent of the time, calling it an “admirable performance and in alignment with urban levels of service.”

Response times are critical. The study says, “Based on the data provided, the department was meeting a five (5) minute response time goal (comprised of turn out time and travel time) for first unit arrival on approximately 44 percent of all calls. It appears that the 90^th percentile of response times would be between 7 and 8 minutes. What this realistically means to the Wake Forest resident is that on 90 percent of emergency responses, their fire department would arrive in 8 minutes or less for a first unit response.”

A large part of Tuesday’s discussion was about how to transition the firefighters into the state retirement system from the 401(k) plan the department now has and to meet each person’s needs during that change.

All seven of the candidates in November’s town board election were at Tuesday’s meeting.

The town has posted the full report on its website. Go to www.wakeforestnc.gov and type in fire department report in the query line to find it.