By ANNELI FOGT

Editor

Vashon Island Fire & Rescue’s (VIFR) proposed 2016 budget of $2.35 million increased roughly $53,000 over this year’s, and the department’s volunteer program is seeing the largest increase in funding.

When compared to 2015, more than $60,000 additional dollars are going toward volunteers in 2016, and VIFR Fire Chief Hank Lipe said the move is because the department relies heavily on volunteers and their increasing workload.

“We’re pretty proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish with … reconstructing the volunteer program,” Lipe said. “It’s been a systematic approach by (Assistant Chief) George (Brown) to bring in well-qualified people. We’re getting lots of calls, which means more response by volunteers.”

The $60,197 of additional money includes an increase in funding for the Volunteer Recruitment and Retention Program from $500 in 2015 to $10,000 in 2016 and also increases volunteer reimbursement by almost 25 percent.

VIFR volunteer coordinator Ross Copland said that he put in various budget requests for advertising and recruiting funds for the program and was happy to learn that all of his requests for the growing program were approved.

“We’re using our success from previous years to build the program up,” Copland said last week. “We have more shifts, we have more calls, and we’re actively going after new members. We’re working really well.”

Lipe presented the budget proposal at a Tuesday, Nov. 17 public meeting and said the district is expecting a 2.3 percent increase in revenue from the annual levy adjustment.

The new budget comes after a year filled with multiple expensive personnel investigations and overtime costs due to injured firefighters. Lipe told The Beachcomber at the meeting that the department was not able to stay within the planned expenses of the 2015 budget in some areas, such as overtime and legal service costs, but he said he is optimistic the department is running on budget.

For legal services, Lipe said the department went $13,000 over the designated $10,000 budget.

“I’m not proud of that, believe me,” Lipe said about the roughly $23,000 total spent in legal fees for five separate personnel investigations. “We did spend a lot of money in 2015. (The overtime and investigations) drained us. But it’s a shell game. You take money from one area and push it to another that needs it.”

He said that the legal fees for the lawyers were necessary to get an unbiased opinion and decision for the personnel incidents that occurred between January and September. He continued to say that hiring outside lawyers was actually “an advantage” in some ways, because it assured that the decisions were made by educated individuals who knew the complex laws surrounding the issues. He declined to comment any further on the nature of the cases due to personnel confidentiality.

“Not all issues require outside investigations, but the ones that took place needed independent investigation by an outside source,” Lipe said last week. “A few were actually picked up by our insurance because they could be a liability if not addressed appropriately. It’s so complex that there was no way a fire chief or anyone in this department could have made an educated decision.”

The 2016 budget calls for an extra $5,000 in legal fees, bringing the budget for that area to $15,000.

Addressing 2015’s overtime overage, Lipe said that there was an ongoing issue all year with job-related injuries and subsequent employee absences. The department was $125,000 over its designated $260,000 overtime budget for paramedics and firefighters in 2015. In an effort to cover the open spots left by the injured, overtime costs skyrocketed. He said that there were three employees out over the course of the year with long injury leaves and “a multitude of short ones.” As of Wednesday, Nov. 18, he said three of the emergency staff were out on job-related injuries, and one is out on a personal injury.

“I don’t believe there’s any one (contributing factor). There’s shoulders and knees and backs, there’s no pattern to (the injuries),” Lipe said. “If it was all knees or all backs, I think it would be easier to see if there was one thing happening, but it’s a multitude of different injuries.”

He said the department also went $38,000 over its 2015 professional services budget, which includes the Strategic Planning Oversight Committee (SPOT). The committee was created at the beginning of this year to help the department gauge the public’s feelings about the department’s performance as it moves forward and closer to the Medic One paramedic transition.

The unknown status of the timing of the transition is causing uncertainty in budgeting, Lipe said. A major need that he highlighted at the Tuesday meeting was the necessity for a new aid car. He said that the car replacement was in 2015’s budget, but there ended up not being any money for it. He said that the purchase cannot be held any longer.

“The aid car has been in the back of my mind for a while,” Lipe said. “It was a bare bones budget (in 2015) because the transition could have possibly occurred in July. The aid car was held because of the uncertainty and because we wanted to make sure that our assets stayed with us. I didn’t want to put in this big capital expenditure and then have to take it to negotiations with the county after the transition.”

Lipe said that the 2016 budget was created with the assumption that the paramedic transition would not happen next year and said that the transition will now likely take place in 2017.

“I’m not optimistic that the process is on the fast track,” Lipe said.

When prompted at the meeting, the VIFR board of commissioners did not voice any comments or concerns about the budget.

The board will vote on the budget at the Tuesday, Nov. 24 meeting.