Commenters seek action on fire station staffing

by Judy Stringer

Nov. 12 city council meeting

Several residents, including two couples who lost their homes to fires, urged Hudson City Council to move quickly in transitioning the fire station to a full-time or hybrid staffing model. Those commenters argued that the current “paid-on-call/volunteer” structure is not up to par.

The city and council are exploring fire department changes. In September, they hired K2M Design of Indianapolis to assess the department’s needs from both staffing and facility standpoints. That $100,500 study is underway and will provide “a suite of options Hudson could choose from” by the end of January, K2M’s Vaughn Miller told council at an Oct. 22 workshop.

Speaking during the Nov. 12 public comment period, however, resident Matthew D’Eramo said he believes the time for studies has passed. He and his wife, Samantha, testified that they waited more than 12 minutes for firefighters to respond to a fire at their St. Regis Boulevard home in January, which resulted in a total loss. 

“Every second of those 12-plus minutes was a painful reminder that our city’s fire protection model is outdated, inefficient and wholly inadequate for community of our size and complexity,” he said.

D’Eramo also stated that “this council and your predecessors have been aware of the limitations in our fire services going back to 2002. The deficiencies and response times, the lack of around-the-clock staffing and the resulting public concern are of no secret.”

Council member Chris Banweg pushed back on the notion that changes in the department structure have “long been called for.” He said the issue did not come to his attention until the council’s summer retreat when council began to discuss a fire department needs assessment study.

At a May 14 city council workshop discussion, Hudson Fire Chief Jerry Varnes tied recent concerns about staffing to the January St. Regis house fire.  During that discussion, Varnes said that based population density, just over half of the city is considered rural, which means for the department to meet national response time standards, it must have six firefighters on the scene within 14 minutes of a call to dispatch, 80% of the time. For suburban communities, 10 firefighters must respond within 10 minutes, 80% of the time. Varnes said Hudson currently meets both standards but added that response times are dependent on distance as well as the timing of the call.

Under the current model, the fire station is not staffed overnight or on the weekend.

“When the station is staffed, we get the required six firefighters there 80% of time in nine minutes,” he said. “When the station is not staffed, those evenings, weekends and holidays, we are at 13 minutes.”

During that May discussion, Varnes presented the costs associated with moving from the current paid-on-call model to a hybrid and to a full-time model. He also said any transition that places firefighters at the station overnight and on the weekends, as both of those models do, would require the construction of a new safety center. Current projections peg that cost at about $15 million.   

According to Varnes’ calculations, a full-time model would require 18 additional full-time firefighters – up from six – and bump annual expenses up to $9.5 million from $4.4 million. The hybrid option would require 30 additional part-time firefighters and increase costs to $6.5 million. In both cases, Varnes included a debit service of $800,000 annually based on a $15-million bond to construct an updated safety center.

The chief made it clear that while he strongly advocates for the construction of a new safety center that can accommodate future department needs – i.e. the transition to overnight and weekend staffing – the cost-versus-benefit analysis to adding staff immediately is less compelling.

“Bringing the firefighters into the station, that is only a three-to-five minute alteration in our overall response time,” he said, adding that the cost of doing so is upwards of $1 million per year against the backdrop of one or two housefires per year over the past 10 years. “As a frugal person, as a lifelong resident, as a taxpayer myself, and as a 47-year fire department person looking at that cost versus that value, it’s hard to see that as a good value.”

Marijuana ban

Council members agreed to take up a conversation about extending the soon-to-expire ban on applications for marijuana-related activities within city limits. The ban terminates on Dec. 12.

Earlier this year, council passed an ordinance that permits recreational marijuana facilities – as well as tattoo parlors and vape shops – but only in Zoning District 9, also known as the Darrowville Commercial Corridor in the south end of Hudson. The ban, however, currently supersedes that allowance.

Banweg said that while 51.8% of residents voted in favor of state legislation legalizing marijuana, he’d like to get public feedback on whether that means they support a dispensary in the city.

“It’s worth looking at the fact that Hudson has approved the state legislation, but only by a thin majority, which I think is what we should be considering when we look at the interests of our folks,” he said.

Council member Patricia Goetz agreed, asking if the ban could be extended for “a few months” to allow public input.

Council is scheduled to regroup on the topic at its Dec. 3 workshop in time to pass legislation on Dec. 10, if that is what they decide to do. 

Norfolk Railway property

Council unanimously passed legislation authorizing the purchase of 1.1 miles of railway from Norfolk Southern Railway Company at a cost of $540,000. The railway segment, which starts at Veterans Way and extends to Barlow Road, is slated to be the northern terminus of a 12.5-mile recreational trail along the abandoned Akron Secondary Line that will run through Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Silver Lake, Stow and Hudson.

Akron Metro RTA owns the rest of the former Akron Secondary and negotiations of lease agreements for that portion – about 90% of the total railway – are ongoing. ∞