Overtime at the Bellingham Fire Department is costing the city an extra $1.8 million a year.
Too few volunteers at Fire District 8, additional sick time and vacations, and an overall staff shortage all contribute, Fire Chief Bill Hewett told city council members on Feb. 27. Also, with higher turnover at the department since 2020, firefighters have increasingly needed to assist with training when they would otherwise be working a shift at the station.
Overtime was about $1.8 million over budget in both 2021 and 2022, and OT has been trending upward since 2015, according to a memo Hewett prepared for the council.
Fire District 8, based in Marietta, has been caught up in a national trend of declining volunteerism at fire stations, Hewett said. The district, which joined the Bellingham Fire Department in 2016, was staffed at the time with eight professional firefighters and 30 volunteers.
Only about five volunteers are left, Hewett told the council on Feb. 27. The district will transition to an all-professional staff later this year.
The district hasn’t had enough volunteers to work shifts in recent years, Hewett said. To fill those seats, professionals had to work overtime in some cases.
The city paid more than $600,000 for overtime to cover volunteer shifts at Fire District 8 in 2021, out of about $2.5 million in fire department overtime that year. The city only budgeted about $700,000 annually for OT in 2021 and 2022.
Vacation time has trended upward, too, as firefighters have gained seniority.
Hewett attributed a spike in sick leave since 2020 to COVID-19 and changes in state law. He added that the extra overtime may be causing additional sick days.
“As employees work more hours, they become fatigued and are more prone to illness and injury,” the chief said in his memo.
Currently, the fire department is 19 people short of its full complement of 165 firefighters, Hewett said in a Feb. 23 email. But the department has 22 people in training.
“When all allotted positions are filled with fully trained people, we should have the capacity to absorb normal sickness, injury or vacation leave,” Hewett said.
With the fire department increasing its staffing and eliminating volunteers from Fire District 8, council members said on Feb. 27 that they hoped overtime in the department would decline, both for the sake of the city’s budget and for the firefighters.
The job takes an emotional toll on fire and paramedic crews. Hewett said some of the increased sick leave has been due to a greater awareness of the strain the job puts on firefighters’ mental health.
“I want to see our firefighters supported and not held over on shifts,” council member Dan Hammill said. “The type of job our firefighters go to is one where they’re seeing people in trauma pretty much every day.”
