St. Paul: City council approves $100,000 for top-to-bottom study of fire department

Feb. 02--The St. Paul City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to dedicate $100,000 to a top-to-bottom review of the St. Paul Fire Department, a major step toward helping the department craft a strategic plan.

The city funds were placed in a contingency reserve account in late 2016. A budget resolution, sponsored by council members Dai Thao and Jane Prince, will release the money, allowing the city to complete a review of the fire department's strengths and weaknesses before the 2018 budget is finalized.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman proposed the study in his budget address last August.

At the time, the mayor said the study would be data-driven and "will likely explore demographic and population shifts in the city, first-responder response times, outcomes for patient care, fleet and facility needs and resource deployment." The city plans to hire an outside private consultant to lead the study.

Council member Chris Tolbert amended the resolution to direct the funds to the Office of Financial Services' Innovation Fund. Tolbert said he's been asking Fire Chief Tim Butler for a long-term plan since 2012, when he became a city council member and attended his first budget meeting with the fire department.

But Tolbert said such a plan has not happened and he wants the study for "an outside perspective to look at the department and make sure we're using the resources correctly when it comes to ensuring we have the proper daily staffing."

With the city's population growing, Tolbert said they know they're going to need more firefighters over the next couple of years.

Butler said he's glad the city is embarking on the study because it's overdue.

After the city commissioned an audit of the fire department, which was released in 2007, Butler said there was a strategic plan for the fire department "on what recommendations could we reasonably accomplish and what would need some investment. The things we could complete, we've done."

But Butler said "resources to make some improvements recommended haven't been as forthcoming as we hoped."

The study should provide information, for example, about how response times affect residents citywide because three neighborhoods don't have paramedic rigs and they come from other areas when needed, Butler said.

"We're looking to identify strategies to deal with rising workloads in EMS and fire with the limited resources we have," Butler said.

Tolbert said he's also been concerned about "excessive overtime" by fire department supervisors. In 2011, the eight highest-paid city of St. Paul employees were deputy and district fire chiefs who made more than the fire chief, the police chief and the mayor because they had been able to clock large amounts of overtime, according to a Pioneer Press analysis.

"That should be in check anyways," Tolbert said of overtime by supervisors.

Mike Smith, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 21, said he believes the city is commissioning the study because the fire department has failed to complete a strategic plan.

"They're going to pay $100,000 to do what the department should have been doing," Smith said Wednesday. "The council's been asking them for a strategic plan and they keep going back to the TriData study, which is outdated."

TriData was the consulting firm that conducted a six-month, $215,000 audit of the fire department that was released in 2007 after being commissioned by Coleman's office.

Smith said he expects the new study will look at everything from where fire stations and equipment are situated to response times and the number of personnel.

"The city's growing, the Green Line is in place, downtown is filling up, more events are coming to St. Paul, businesses -- and everything grows except the fire department," Smith said. "Something has to give."

Ten days after Coleman's budget address, in which he brought up the fire department study, the international union representing St. Paul firefighters voted to censure Butler, publicly airing the rank-and-file union's long-simmering frustration with his leadership.

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