{"id":2447514,"date":"2019-08-13T22:08:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T04:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/aspen-fire-board-no-on-paid-firefighters-for-now\/"},"modified":"2019-08-13T22:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-14T04:08:00","slug":"aspen-fire-board-no-on-paid-firefighters-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-fire-board-no-on-paid-firefighters-for-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Fire Board: No on paid firefighters for now"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The Aspen Volunteer Fire Department building on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2019, in Aspen. (Photo by Austin Colbert\/The Aspen Times)<\/strong>
Austin Colbert\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Despite pressure from a contingent of firefighters, the Aspen Fire Protection District Board declined Tuesday to begin formally looking into hiring paid firefighters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ask for a hard decision now, the answer will be no to paid staffing,\u201d board President Karl Adam said. \u201cI am not willing to engage the public when I\u2019m not sure where we\u2019re going with this. A lot more thought needs to be put into this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The somewhat contentious discussion at Tuesday\u2019s board meeting was prompted by the presence of a group of volunteer firefighters who were involved with producing or support a report that urges Aspen Fire to convert to a department with a combination of volunteers and paid firefighters.<\/p>\n

That committee\u2019s report on an improved operational plan \u2014 issued in April \u00ad\u2014 urges the board to hire eight paid firefighters. Their plan calls for one paid firefighter and one volunteer firefighter to staff the North Forty Fire Station and the downtown fire station 24 hours a day in 12-hour shifts.<\/p>\n

\u201cA change to a full \u2018paid department\u2019 is no one\u2019s goal,\u201d the report states. \u201cA highly customized, well-crafted \u2018combination department\u2019 that preserves our primarily volunteer model fulfills this committee\u2019s vision for best, responsible, reliable service for our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The eight paid firefighters would cost about $700,000 a year, Aspen Fire Chief Rick Balentine has said. The department currently relies on volunteer firefighters and seven paid administrators.<\/p>\n

Adam Cohen, a member of the committee that issued the report, told the board Tuesday that committee members were eager for a response from board members to the report after five months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like a reply,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just want to see some movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Board member Dennis Murray said he wasn\u2019t impressed by the committee\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read the proposals and I don\u2019t like any of them,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to make it work with the volunteer model. We want to (staff the department) with volunteers \u2026 until we get to a place where we can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before dealing with the staffing question, the board first needs to quantify the department\u2019s mission and the services it ought to be providing to the residents of the district, Murray said.<\/p>\n

Aspen Fire Chief Rick Balentine said the department \u201cwithout a doubt needs overnight staffing\u201d to improve response times. Doing that with only volunteers places a serious burden on those volunteers, he said.<\/p>\n

Board member Stoney Davis, however, wondered why the 24-hour staffing was necessary when no one has died in a fire recently and no one\u2019s home has burned down.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to me we\u2019re adequately servicing the community without 24-hour staffing,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy do we need someone sitting (around) at the North Forty waiting for a call?\u201d<\/p>\n

Deputy Fire Chief Parker Lathrop said responding to calls is only 10% of a firefighter\u2019s job. The other 90% involves inspections and other work that generally doesn\u2019t allow firefighters the chance to sit around watching television while on duty, he said.<\/p>\n

Adam, the board chairman, assured firefighters that their report wouldn\u2019t be locked away and not dealt with at all. Instead, he said he\u2019d like to first focus on building firefighter housing units at the North Forty in the near future and \u201ckick the can down the road\u201d on paid firefighters to the end of the year at least.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve not done the work at our level yet,\u201d Adam said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of items we need to consider at the board level before we give direction in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

In November, voters approved a mill levy<\/a> that will raise $54.8 million during the next 20 years, which Balentine has said will be spent on firefighter housing, replacing capital needs like firetrucks and possibly paid firefighters.<\/p>\n

jauslander@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aspen Volunteer Fire Department building on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2019, in Aspen. (Photo by Austin Colbert\/The Aspen Times)Austin Colbert\/The Aspen Times Despite pressure from a contingent of firefighters, the Aspen Fire Protection District Board declined Tuesday to begin formally looking into hiring paid firefighters. \u201cIf you ask for a hard decision now, the answer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2447514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 22:47:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}