City re-examines staffing levels

Sept. 29--Periodically the question as to the necessity, or lack, of the mandated staffing levels of the Portsmouth Police Department and the Portsmouth Fire Department comes up, and Monday (Sept. 22) night's Portsmouth City Council meeting was no exception.

During his discussion of the city's new recovery plan, City Manager Derek Allen brought it up again.

"I anticipate putting in the budget next year having an independent firm do an actual manpower study of both police and fire," Allen said. "It isn't made by me. It isn't made by the employees. It's somebody independent to either verify or tell us what level staffing should be in the police and fire."

The current charter calls for each of those departments to have 44 employees.

"If it (report) comes back and says, 'you should have 44 and 44' then what we can tell the public is we found every operational savings. We did everything in council's power. The only thing left is an income tax increase," Allen said.

Portsmouth Fire Chief Bill Raison said he doesn't mind someone coming in to look at the staffing levels.

"That doesn't bother me in the least. If they want to do a study I'd say full steam ahead."But I can tell you right now what the end result is going to be. They're going to say -- 'you're understaffed.'" he said.

Raison said the city went through an ISO (a leading source of information about property/casualty insurance risk) rating, which he said is what insurance premiums are based on.

"After the last survey we had with ISO we improved our ISO rating. We were a five and we went to a four and we were really pleased with the work we had done to accomplish that improvement. I feel like that's our responsibility to the public to do the best we can to get the best rating they can possibly have for their insurance," Raison said. "So we asked ISO what do we have to do to get to a three? Help us identify the next target areas that we should address to get us to a three. And the surveyor told us, based on your staffing levels, you can't get to a three."

Raison says from the ISO's point of view the PFD will not be able to improve because of its current staffing level.

"The NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) recommended guidelines are that we should never have an engine with less than four people on it," Raison said. "And we roll an engine out of the Hilltop and Sciotoville every day with only two people on it. So you can do a study if you want but what they are going to find is that we're understaffed."

Allen talked about the city's budget and introduced council to several proposals that could cut costs or add revenue. He reemphasized that all of the aspects of the proposal have been looked at and all action possible to get the city back on track must be done first.

"But until we do all these things and we have exhausted everything possible, I don't want to recommend an income tax increase," Allen said. "But I will say this -- if all those things are done, as a city, we cannot turn the corner if we don't have people to mow grass or take care of the parks."

Allen said the city has "zero parks people."

"The Street Department should be out fixing streets," Allen said. "They're out usually mowing. But before any of that could come forward, we would have to have a plan in place that says these are the activities that any income tax increase would go to and these are the fund balance levels that we need to have. And it's not that we're asking the voters to vote an income tax increase so the employees can get a raise. That's not the purpose of that."

Reach Frank Lewis at 740-353-3101, ext. 1928, or on Twitter @franklewis.

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