The second topic dealt with continuing county investment in public safety personnel at a critical juncture in the community as volunteer rescue personnel levels have waned.
“We have a combination fire/rescue and [Emergency Medical Services] system in that we have our Department and Fire Rescue staff who work in partnership with our key volunteer stations throughout the county,” Bowman said. “That system has been changing in recent years.”
In recent years, Albemarle County has received three grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency under their Staffing For Adequate Fire and Emergency Response program, also known as SAFER. The federal government pays for the first few years of new firefighters before funding responsibility transitions to the local government.
To hear more about the immediate future, Chief Dan Eggleston was on hand to give a sense of what his department’s future needs would be. This was in the form of a Strategic Outlook and Needs Assessment.
Supervisors adopted an updated strategic plan in October 2022. Goal #1 is Safety and Well-Being. Goal #2 is a Resilient, Equitable, and Engaged Community. Goal #6 is Workforce and Customer Service.
“We begin by ensuring that our objectives are in lockstep with the county’s strategic plan which sets a direction for our operational priorities,” Eggleston said. “Our next step involved a thorough assessment of our service performance against our standards of cover which is a Board adopted plan that is instrumental in defining the scope and the level of services that we provide.”
Those standards of cover were adopted in June 2019 and established response time objectives. In the development area, first responders have a goal of being on site within eight minutes 90 percent of the time. The rural area goal is 21 minutes, also 90 percent of the time.
Since 2019, calls for service have increased 20 percent in the development area.
“And mainly that is driven by the urbanization of our county and an aging population,” Eggleston said. “One thing to keep in mind is that this increase really across the board for both fire and EMS emergencies. At first we through that growth was mainly related to EMS but it’s across the board which really relates to the density and urbanization of our community.”
Eggleston said the number of calls for service for mental health cases is increasing.
“In fact, I just heard today at our [Emergency Communications Center] regional meeting that the number of suicide-related calls today almost match the number of cardiac arrest calls, so that’s something that all of us, the county, the city, and the University are keeping a close eye on,” Eggleston said.
Eggleston said the county has hired the equivalent of 69 full-time personnel since FY20, which in turn created higher costs for training and other support services for those in the field. He also said the county continues to follow a national trend away from volunteerism.
“The volunteers, not only in Albemarle but also across the country, have been the backbone of fire and EMS service delivery for years and their decline is hitting us hard at the current time during evenings and weekends,” Eggleston said. “It’s really important to note that this decline in volunteers is not consistent across the county. There are some of our volunteer stations that remain very strong and are in fact getting stronger by the year. But others are grappling with reduced volunteer numbers, so this difference is a crucial aspect of our challenge and we must consider it as we explore potential solutions.”
Eggleston said it takes two years to fully train someone to be a firefighter, which provides another logistical challenge.
Of those 69 new positions since FY20, 50 of them have been funded at least initially through the federal SAFER program. That program covers the first three years of a new position.
David Puckett is the Deputy Chief of Operations at Albemarle County Fire Rescue. He thanked the board for recent investments in personnel including a reimbursement program for volunteers as well as pay-scale adjustments for public safety.
“Fire Rescue will be fully staffed when our recruit school starts in January and employee turnover in 2023 was the lowest its been since we started recording it in 2016,” Puckett said.
Puckett said that has led to less overtime and fewer service reductions. The additional staffing has also allowed the county to transition to a no-cost mutual aid agreement with Charlottesville. He said response times for ambulances are down 10 percent and down eight percent for fire response.
“It is important to note, thought, that communities across Albemarle don’t experience these improvements the same,” Puckett said. “As an example, after adding career staff and an ambulance to the North Garden station, that community experienced a 25 percent reduction in ambulance responses Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. But other areas like the Route 29 and Rio Road area, haven’t seen any improvements in ambulance response times due to the high call demand and limited resources.”
Puckett said in general the county is able to meet the standards of cover for the rural areas, but there is still work to be done to meet the standards for the development area.
Eggleston suggested several broad options to Supervisors to consider for the future.
- Option 1: “Revaluate and optimize the County’s emergency response strategies to focus on the distribution of assets and efforts to effectively address the most critical needs.”
- Option 2 would maintain current service levels but “augment staffing at volunteer stations and add staff to account for increased call volume.”
- Option 3: Maintain current service levels and omplement prevention and resiliency programs.
Eggleston said option 3 could involve identifying a subset of calls that may not need a full ambulance response.
“Right now about 20 percent of our calls are low acuity EMS calls so there could perhaps be a deferral to a much more proactive, preventive type program that’s a lot less costly than an ambulance that’s staffed 24/7,” Eggleston said. “This is a trend that’s coming about very quickly in the fire service and I think this is something we should explore.”
Options 2 and 3 come with additional costs, but no dollar amounts were given at this presentation. Eggleston said 52 full-time additional equivalents over the next five years would be needed to implement option 2 which would see a move to 24/7 career staffing at some volunteer stations, but not all.
Option 3 would take another nine full-time equivalents.
Supervisor Diantha McKeel noted that the Comprehensive Plan currently sets an expectation that community members in the rural area should not expect the same level of service.
“And I think we just need to be aware of that because as we’re going through and updating our comp plan, that’s a decision and policy and I just want to make sure that our comp plan matches what we are actually doing,” McKeel said.
The AC44 process continues this year and is expected to be completed by the time 2025 rolls around.
Supervisor Ned Gallaway said that more conversation is needed to go through the details, conversations that will happen during the budget cycle later this year. In response to a question about capacity, Eggleston responded that another ambulance is needed at the station on Berkmar Drive to avoid units being pulled from other parts of the county when there are multiple calls.
There will be more on this topic into the new year. One topic not explored in this story would be efforts to work with senior living facilities to provide more on-site services to reduce calls for service.
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