Amid Budget Woes, Spokane, WA, Fire Training Academy Canceled

Sep. 22—The Spokane Fire Department canceled its fire training academy this year to alleviate the city's budget woes, but it's possible the move saved future layoffs, leaving officials comfortable with where the department stands.

The decision to cut the 2024 academy saved around $750,000. If the department had kept the academy, it likely couldn't afford to keep the new recruits, said Spokane Fire Department Chief Julie O'Berg.

"I don't want to say we are where we need to be ... but enough to where we can contribute," she said. "The flip side is if things did not go the way we wanted, I don't want to have to bring on more than 20 young people and then maybe have to lay them off before a year of employment.

"That's not a great way to operate."

Spokane's general fund budget hole at the beginning of the year was projected to be around $25 million, a hole the city needed to plug to prevent impending layoffs and major changes surrounding the public safety departments. The general fund deficit is now estimated to be $10.9 million, according to city spokeswoman Erin Hut, a 56% decrease within nine months.

Because the department also has a different staffing model than police, it's not as though the public would see a difference in emergency responses because of the academy cut, O'Berg said. The fire department's model is solely based on the number of trucks in service regardless of how many calls they have. There are no more firefighters added due to call volume, which often gets confused with the police department. Police tend to distribute officers where they're needed — for example, one call could take 20 officers, according to previous reporting from The Spokesman-Review.

"You could look at trends and say, 'This part of the city is growing; it's time to add another unit,' but we don't add people on a day -to -day basis based on call volume," O'Berg said.

Currently, the department has a healthy enough relief pool, a group of firefighters and four battalion chiefs unassigned to a specific engine. When someone is sick or on vacation, those relief pool employees will fill those spots. The relief pool could be better, the chief said, because with a lack of relief pool employees, the gaps must be substituted with overtime. But the pool is at a decent staffing level right now, very different in comparison to a few years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, O'Berg said. She also is not concerned about the probability of canceling the academy next year.

"We were in a position with that where I felt comfortable that we could stop for one year and the savings would go to budget concerns," she said.

The $750,000 may seem small in comparison to a looming $10 million, but Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown is adamant that "every little bit helps."

"It's a set of small decisions (that) all add up to moving in the right direction," Brown said, adding the city knew they could reverse the decision to cut the academy as soon as they regained solid financial footing.

Among those that agreed with the decision is city Councilman Johnathan Bingle, a conservative who often challenges Brown on certain public safety or budgetary decisions. While spending time since he was elected analyzing public safety needs and city resources, like the costs of fire engines, he said the cut from the fire academy is more exploratory right now than anything. But those cuts from the academy "make the most sense right now."

"Obviously, we don't want any detrimental effects to public safety. There are ways we can find savings in all departments," he said. "It's not like we are cutting back, we are just not adding anything. No one is going to see any decrease in service."

Right now, the city "has to pull back" and be more judicious with its resources, Bingle said. But Brown is steadfast the city must also invest where they are struggling at the same time.

The fire department is mostly understaffed within the CARES team, a social work program embedded within the fire department to connect people to resources like substance use treatment, mental health care and housing. Fire is also working hard to expand the behavioral response unit, or BRU, a team that specifically responds to overdose calls or mental health calls.

Those teams are "completely different funding streams" and a "completely different" staffing model, O'Berg said, so a recruit academy does not help with that.

"That takes time. It takes time to build new programs," O'Berg said. "It happens much slower than any of us would like."

Brown said she often is asked how the city can invest in some resources while stripping others; it's simple, she said, because the solution lies in alternative funding sources.

For example, Brown noted that the city used opioid settlement funds Washington was awarded in recent years on behavioral health and substance abuse. The city invested $500,000 of those settlement dollars to expand CARES.

"We'll try to bring back the academy no matter what happens," Brown said, adding it's partly why she wants people to vote for her proposed safety tax in November.

The proposed sales tax increase of 0.1% is projected to generate about $7.7 million annually over its initial years. Fifteen percent will flood in to Spokane County. For every $1,000 spent on retail goods and services in the city, the tax would cost consumers an additional $1, according to previous reporting from The Spokesman-Review. Brown wants this tax, if approved, to be apportioned each year to the city for public safety investments.

"It's a system. There's response, there's staffing, there's alternative response units," Brown said. "It's really hard to just say you're going to do one thing without looking at the whole system if we want something to make a visible change on the streets. Investments need to occur at the same time."

Even while cutting some areas and attempting to advance other areas, O'Berg said major differences in problems the city faces won't happen overnight. And the solution to problems the fire department may face, doesn't lie with the academy.

"Would I always take more people? Yes. Are we meeting our benchmarks? Yes. We are a busy department, and we are keeping an eye on that. But when you talk about struggling, I think the last two years we've made great strides ... so we aren't struggling near what we used to be," O'Berg said. "It's not a dial that moves quickly."

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