1A, Lake Johanna Fire Budget, Capital Facilities Need Study

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Saint Cloud Fire Department, MN Fire Protection Master Plan- Executive Summary Document In summary, the long-term staffing strategy calls for: . An increase over the planning period to a total of ninety operations employees or FTE's . An increase over the planning period to a total of twelve administrative and support employees or FTE's Organizational Structure The St. Cloud Fire Department should develop into a model combination-staffed fire department, fully integrating career personnel with paid-on-call members in a single, unified organizational structure. This strategy, while representing a significant change for St. Cloud, is not unusual in the fire service. Some of the most successful combination organizations across the country have fully integrated their career and part-time duty staff, as well as their on-call personnel, into a seamless operation. In many of these departments, one can spend a significant period of time in one of their fire stations without being able to identify which firefighters are career, which are part-time, and which are volunteer or paid-on-call. The strategy would call for a major overhaul in how services are delivered. Stations would no longer be identified as career or volunteer stations. Instead, each station would operate with blended staff, using a combination of career and paid-on-call personnel. All jurisdictional issues of career vs. paid- on-call response would, as recommended earlier this report, be eliminated in favor of the closest appropriate unit being dispatched to any emergency call. Career personnel would provide the consistent response force for most emergencies and on-call personnel would provide trained supplemental manpower for major incidents or simultaneous calls. The response of on-duty career personnel would not be restricted by either geography or time of day. Likewise, on-call responders would be capable of responding to incidents from stations in any part of the City of Saint Cloud to provide supplemental manpower to on-duty response strength. In addition, we recommend that on-call responders also be given some opportunity to be scheduled as part-time on-duty firefighters at a specific assigned station for specific assigned shifts. This provides them with a consistent opportunity to attend training alongside the career staff and experience initial response call volume to gain experience. Through this method, opportunity is also created to enhance camaraderie and build some level of unity among personnel. 13