The Fairbanks City Council approved an ordinance Monday that establishes a $20,000 sign-on bonus for paramedics joining the city’s fire department.
Officials hope the incentive might help the department fill its ranks with top life-saving personnel, and it gained enough support to pass, but some council members questioned whether it was really needed.
Fairbanks Mayor David Pruhs and Councilmember Crystal Tidwell cosponsored the measure. Pruhs said it’s a tactic to attract the best applicants for five current firefighter vacancies in the department.
He also said the city spent less on salaries so far this year than had been forecasted, leaving some room in the budget to pay for the bonus.
“This program is looking to grab the highest qualified person that has a license, and give them a bonus of $20,000, which is paid for internally from salary savings,” Pruhs told the council.
The ordinance says new hires will receive half the money within 30 days of completing their probationary period and half after three years of service.
The bonus opportunity sunsets at the end of this year, unless the council later chooses to extend it.
Paramedics complete the most advanced training among emergency medical technicians. The hiring bonus that attempts to bring more of them to Fairbanks was backed by the city’s fire chief, Andrew Coccaro.
According to meeting minutes, he told the council in June that recruitment in general wasn’t a problem, and that the department does have paramedics among its higher ranks. But he said attracting certified paramedics at the firefighter level has proved difficult.
Councilmember Lonny Marney said Monday that, at first, he was on the fence about OKing the hiring incentive. But he said after talking with the city’s fire chief, he feels that filling vacancies with top candidates ultimately seemed worth the investment.
“It’s dead at the end of the year, and if we don’t find success, we haven’t lost anything, but if we do, we’ve gained a lot,” Marney said.
The ordinance was a head-scratcher for Councilmember Jerry Cleworth, however, who is no stranger to resisting new spending on fire department personnel.
He was the lone no vote back in December when the council passed the current budget, in part because it added nine positions to the department that Cleworth didn’t believe were necessary.
Cleworth’s reservations were similar Monday, and he said there isn’t a shortage of city paramedics. With 17 of them on staff and three city ambulances, which must be manned by a paramedic, he said that job classifications and minimum staffing terms in the firefighters’ union contract are the real problem.
“To say that we’re running short is very misleading to the general public,” he said. “It puzzles me because it’s just a contractual, logistical problem. And what we’re doing to solve that problem is typical with government that I’ve seen, and we throw money at it.”
A new contract between the city and the firefighters union is currently in mediation after the council narrowly rejected it last November.
Coccaro said Monday that the bonus could actually help save money by ensuring the department has enough paramedics to avoid forced overtime and limit hours senior personnel spend in an ambulance.
The ordinance also says that the city sending one employee through a paramedic program costs $16,000 for tuition and up to $120,000 in salaries, overtime and benefits.
“[It] would a very high cost per hour to use a battalion chief captain or an engineer in a paramedic spot,” Coccaro said. “We’re trying to recruit firefighter paramedics that will keep … costs down to the minimum as best we can.”
The council ultimately approved the measure in a 4-2 vote, with Cleworth and Councilmember John Ringstad voting no.
The bonus now joins other city hiring incentives for emergency services and first responders after the council renewed recruitment programs for police and dispatch earlier this year.