News / Upcoming Events
Letter to City Council from the FPFFA, June 7, 2009
June 6, 2009
Dear Council members,
We would like to take just a few minutes of your time to echo some sentiments that were expressed in the letter you received late last week from the “concerned public safety servants”.
First, we would like to express to each of you that we are very grateful for the jobs and careers we have. We recognize that these are very trying economic times for everyone, but even more so for you as members of the council that is charged with trying to provide services for the city with the budget constraints we have. There may never be a good time to express some of these concerns, but since it is fresh on everyone’s mind, we feel that you should be armed with as much information as possible so that you can do what is right, not just for the city & the citizens served, but for the employees as well.
But, as we said, times are tough. Most firefighters are forced to work a second and even a third job on the side just to make ends meet. Some would say that it’s because we only work ten days a month. Yes, that’s true, but our days are 24 ¼ hours long instead of the 8 hour days that every other city employee works, including police officers. While the regular city employee works a 40 hour week, we work a 56 hour week. We are expected and required to work holidays and weekends. We are out in the rain, the heat, even the snow and ice. We accept that, it’s the career that we have all freely chosen. However, all we ask is that we have some parity with the other public safety employees, police officers.
We are classed as general employees by the City of Fayetteville Human Resources Department, not public safety. The state of North Carolina and the federal government both consider firefighters as public safety personnel. Proof is in the wording of the Public Safety Officers Benefits (PSOB) in the event of a Line of Duty Death (LODD). We are regularly referred to as ‘First Responders’, which in itself implies emergency response to public safety incidents. As was said buy our colleagues in the prior letter to you, you rarely see a police car out on an emergency incident without a fire truck along side.
Our call response volume has increased each year, since the city has grown in both size & population. In 2006, the Fayetteville Fire Department responded to a total of 18,882 incidents, in 2007 we responded to 20,379 incidents, and in 2008 we responded to 22,608 incidents.
If you look at some comparisons between firefighters and other city employees, you will see that with the exception of police officers, no other job classification could be considered as a regular or routinely hazardous career as a firefighter. Yet, we are paid significantly less than other jobs that do not require the training, mental & physical stamina, commitment, dedication or risk that firefighting does. Here are just a few examples of the starting annual salaries;
Civilian Traffic
Investigator - $32,301
Forensic Technician - $32,301
Forensic Photographic Technician - $32,301
Secretary - $29,678
Police Officers - $33,813
Firefighter - $29,506
We find it disturbing, to say the least, that there is so much disparity in the annual salaries between firefighters and several other positions that do not require the amount of training that becoming a firefighter does. To give a summary of what it takes to become a firefighter for the City of Fayetteville, at a minimum, each one is required to successfully complete 33 individual Firefighter I &II certification classes along with instruction in defensive driving & Incident Command Systems (ICS). These classes take approximately 474 hours and include lecture hours, hands-on practical evolutions & evaluations and a written test for each class. Then each firefighter is required to become credentialed as a North Carolina Emergency Medical Technician – Basic (EMT-B). This training also requires classroom lecture and hands-on practical evolutions and evaluations and written tests for each section, totaling approximately 169 hours. This equals up to roughly 643 hours of education to be certified as a North Carolina Level II Firefighter and a North Carolina EMT-B.
We would ask that you take some of these facts, along with the other information that you have already received, into consideration when planning the budget for the fiscal year 2009-2010 as well as in future years.
We would welcome the opportunity to answer any questions you may have now or in the future, as well as form a working relationship with the council to help make our great department even better.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
The members of the Fayetteville Professional Firefighters Association
www.fayettevillefire.org
