by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Eight years ago, City Council started looking into whether or not the services provided by the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department met the needs of a city growing at the pace of Jacksonville.
A year later, Council passed an ordinance that required a study every five years that looked into that very issue. Tri-Data, a division of Arlington, Va.-based System Planning Corporation, was hired by JFRD to do the initial study in 2001 and a subsequent study in 2006. In response to the 2006 study, the City built a new station on the Westside, one near Queen’s Harbour and a third near Mayo Clinic that will be done in late spring or early summer.
The dominant theme of both studies, however, was that Jacksonville needed more fire stations and more equipment in order to drastically reduce response time – a response time that on average is 7:02, far below the National Fire Protection Association’s recommended time of four minutes or less. Dan Kleman, director of JFRD, says the slow response time is attributed to rapid growth, the physical size of Jacksonville geographically and the need for more stations and more manpower.
“Time truly is the enemy,” said Kleman at Tuesday’s meeting of the Council Finance Committee. He added that Jacksonville’s response time is in the 90th percentile. “Kitchen fires can become house fires and cardiac arrests can become fatalities.”
Kleman made his pitch in the form of a nearly 20-minute presentation that focused on the number of stations currently in use and compared the needs of the city to JFRD’s plans to address those needs. Those plans include the addition of eight new stations to the tune of $34.76 million. While that’s the price tag for the stations themselves and rescue equipment, Kleman explained the true cost includes an additional $2.32 million a year per station in operating costs.
“The real costs are the operating costs, the day-to-day costs,” he said, adding JFRD has only nine units with a minimum of four personnel. Kleman would like to raise that to 23 “for the purposes of the city’s safety and the safety of the firefighters.
“All of this is a costly undertaking.”
Kleman said he and his staff are currently working on a funding strategy for the needed expansion. He said his presentation Tuesday was simply a formal introduction to the Finance Committee of his department’s needs.
“We will bring back a funding strategy in the next couple of months,” he said. “Time is the most important thing we measure and the most important thing to address.”
Finance Committee member Stephen Joost was amazed to learn that at any given moment there may only be four rescue units available to cover Jacksonville’s 840 square miles.
“I think that underscores the seriousness of our situation,” said Joost.
Finance Chair Art Shad agreed.
“I can’t think of many more things that should be higher on our priorities list than lowering response times,” said Shad, assuring Kleman he will get with the mayor’s office to see where the City stands on the issue.