Tom Breen Photo
(Opinion) Note: Battalion Chief Frank Ricci (pictured), president of New Haven Fire Fighters union, wrote the following article about Tuesday night’s scheduled vote by the Board of Alders on the coming fiscal year’s budget.
New Haven Fire Department has great medics. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough of them.
The systemic problems with the fire department’s medic program have gone unchecked for years. Mismanagement and politics over public safety have plagued the quality of emergency medicine.
Our medics have been unsupported, overworked to the point of burnout and exposed to unnecessary liability by being forced to work in an outdated delivery model. The program not been supported by the fire department, City Hall dwellers or the clergy, who now seek to defend the service.
Absent from this conversation is the reality that this issue is not just about taxpayer money. It is not about just a choice of having the highest medical service and paying higher taxes for it. It is not just about outsourcing and having a private company take over the service.
The crux of the issue comes down to jobs for city residents or keeping the medic program and being forced to hire from the suburbs.
Following best practices, due to years of neglect, the next two classes would have to be completely previously trained medics from the suburbs.
Over the last six years, the city has failed to hire an adequate number of medics to support the system. The city has been averaging around five medics per class, when the real number needed would be 10 in every recruit class.
The last class the city only hired one medic. City leaders lacked the political will to hire medics and prioritized hiring city residents. The city made a choice to doom the medic program with fanfare. In fact, the city added needless requirements to make it harder if not impossible to hire certified medics from out of state. This has contributed to small medic lists.
And now, some want to throw rocks at the mayor for turning on the light exposing the failing program in an attempt to keep the tax increase at a more manageable level, hire more city residents and maintain a similar level of service.
In recent years six medics went fleeing to better systems, another two were promoted away from providing medic service, and several other medics retired.
The simple truth is over 99 percent of city residents don’t possess a paramedic certification. The option of sending existing firefighters to school to achieve political desired demographics is costly, drives overtime to backfill positions and has no guarantee of producing certified medics.
The medic class is intensive and takes over a year to complete. In the last six years, taxpayers sent four firefighters to medic school with only one firefighter achieving certification and providing medic service to residents.
Passing medic school is no small feat and takes over a year to complete. In order to have a quality and progressive medic program, the department over the last 10 years would have needed to hire 10 medics in every class. They didn’t!
New Haven’s program was state of the art when it started. In the early ‘80s the program gained national prominence. It is a shame New Haven did not keep up with the times. The public often opines that the city only needs to send two person pickup trucks to medicals cutting costs. Only these uninformed opinions don’t acknowledge the operational realities first responders face. Two firefighters can’t provide quality care and carry you down the stairs from the third or second floor.
The current model does not provide enough medics on duty each day. This leads to private sector medics backing up your engine company providing care and transport without a fire department medic on emergencies every day.
Two firefighters are not enough to provide critical care in a street setting. Your neighborhood fire engine will still need to respond. A cardiac arrest or trauma response in the controlled setting of an ER has a response of more than 10 medical providers. Two-person crews only stand as an empty promise to take care of your family.
New Haven stands as the only city of significance in Connecticut that provides medic service. Hartford, Bridgeport, Danbury, Waterbury, New Britain and Meriden all provide emergency medical technicians backed up by the private-sector medics.
Labor and Management worked together in the last contract with the union agreeing to the concession of the possibility of dropping staffing to 69. The contract allows the mayor and alders to decide on the level of service they would want the Fire Department to provide.
The contract also allows for a pause in medic service while the city puts into place a plan to ensure 10 medics are hired in every class, while still hiring city residents.
The Alders have three choices tonight:
• Raise taxes, continue the unmitigated liability of having three pick-up trucks racing across the city. Hire from the suburbs and keep staffing at 72 doubling down on the current failed system.
• Raise taxes, drop staffing to 69, hire from the suburbs and place a medic on every engine company placing New Haven alongside of the most progressive fire departments in the nation like, Montgomery County, Maryland; Fairfax, Virginia; Miami Dade County, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and L.A. County, California. This is the best option for our citizens.
• Approve the mayor’s budget decreasing the tax increase. Hire more city residents, save million in the in the end by dropping staffing to 69. Your neighborhood fire engine will still be at your home in less than five minutes 90 percent of the time backed up by private-sector medics.
The choice is yours. New Haven firefighters stand ready to respond.