Chief explains SLTFD staffing
Lake Tahoe News asked South Lake Tahoe Fire Chief Jeff Meston about staffing issues at station two.
Here is his response:
“Fire station two has two personnel assigned to it; a shift commander whose role is to provide 24-hour dedicated supervision to the on-duty resources, provide for consistency, safety and accountability for daily crew assignments and to coordinate all emergency responses.
“We also have one engineer assigned to the squad at that station whose emergency response capabilities include rescue systems, ventilation, forcible entry, advanced life support EMS and a variety of technical rescue components that the department has. This deployment supports our additional engine and medic units deployed at stations one and three.
“Our daily staffing has remained consistent at 10 and we staff up based on conditions that include red flag wildland warnings, inter-facility transfers that take medic units off the hill and for special events that require a more robust emergency response.
“We now also for the first time meet the national standard for an effective fire response delivering 15 personnel to a first alarm assignment with our automatic aid agreement with Lake Valley, staffing can also be augmented with mutual aid from Tahoe Douglas, CalFire and USFS.
“We were able to dedicate a shift commander based on our recent collective bargaining agreement which met a significant city goal, and we accomplished this with no increase to our budget, no addition of personnel all within our modest staffing levels. We implemented this approximately 30 days ago and have found that a dedicated shift commander has improved our operations immensely.”
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Interesting. Does the squad staffed with one engineer get dispatched to ems calls along with an ambulance and engine in the station 2 response area? And will this model continue when the truck goes into service or will the shift commander and engineer then staff the truck?
So we have a fire station with only a couple of firemen in it because we’re low on staffing and a huge million plus dollar ladder fire truck which is too big to put in the firehouse or drive on city streets. At almost 50 feet long, it’s no wonder. And because it exceeds the weight limit for roads in California, and it has a rather bad track record for reliability, it has’nt even been used yet since its been broken since its arrival to SLT. It’s been in the shop for one reason or another upon purchase and delivery.
While I think our fire department is great(I know they saved my butt!!!) maybe a little oversight is needed.
Now I hear where some of the fire fighters are looking for other places to work because of what they claim is low pay and a loss of benefits.
I hope this all gets worked out. OLS
OLS, maybe the community college will train enough to make up the slack now that they will be getting a training cehter. I dont know if you know this but our police and firemen are the highest paid in the city. Many I would guess came here because of qquality of life for their family vs living in a place like LA county
That truck was built to the specifications outlined by south lake fire dept people. They got what they wanted. Unfortunately, a behemoth like that does not belong on our steep icy roads. Waste of a million bucks.
OLS, South Lake Tahoe public safety employees in general, not just the fire fighters, are paying close attention to the market for their professional services. The public, including the posters on this forum, have denigrated “overpaid cops” and “coddled fire fighters” for quite a while. Your City has heard your complaints and after taking great pride in breaking commitments to retirees made almost 30 years ago and cutting benefits to the current, underpaid by market standards, employees, there’s no question that trained, professional employees are looking to cities that appreciate and deserve their services. And there’s plenty of them out there – working next to a beautiful Lake (albeit living in affordable housing in a Nevada Valley 20 miles away) only counts for so much.
If you compare your fire fighters to grocery baggers and your cops to private door shakers, guess who you’re eventually going to be hiring. If you truly feel protected anyway, then you have no cause for complaint.
Amen to what Copper Said.
Copper has it right. Nobody in their right mind should want to work for an organization that is so pathologically dysfunctional & consistently fiscally irresponsible in refusing to meet their legal obligations or trying to weasel out of them. Quite frankly, the honorable thing for the City to do would be to disincorporate & turn everything back to the County or State.
Copper, when government unions bargain at arms length with true representatives of the taxpayer and not paid off political hacks then your argument stands up, but until then it is a stacked deck. Stop your whining and check out what public safety personnel total compensation is. It is mighty high.
Yes leagle beagle,
That the unions get to negotiate with people that they give contributions to, and that they can go out and help for campaign for, explains why they get such sweetheart deals. And of course, the money all comes from the taxpayer, which unions then use to ‘support’ their elected officials, and thus get even more money from the taxpayer. It’s a hugely conflicted interest cycle of taxpayer dollars.
Of course that’s not just in Tahoe, but in many municipalities.
And of course every time the sweetheart deals are questioned, there’s this uproar of people claiming that to question anything about govt. expenses, means one is opposed to any & all govt. services. No we need some govt. services, we just need them to be responsive to the taxpayer.
And as far as Tahoe goes, there’s always the claim that the salaries & benefits are necessary to get qualified people. Well I know good people that left town cause they can’t get hired, and are working elsewhere. I know people who’ve been hired whose qualifications were questioned, but let’s just say had ‘relatives in high places’. And if it’s so tough to get ‘qualified people’, have you ever seen a recruitment drive here in town?
They’ve negotiated a good deal here in our town. Good for them. But I wish they’d be more appreciative of it.