Privacy policy<\/a><\/p>\nMore firefighters?<\/p>\n
Asked by Councilman Bryan Callahan whether the budget will add firefighters, Reynolds said it is \u201cone of many considerations.\u201d The city budgets 24 firefighters per shift, he said, and filling every job would come close to the 22 on duty the study recommends as a minimum. Four jobs are open now, and four firefighters plan to retire in April and May, he said.<\/p>\n
Over the past few months, as overtime dropped, more shifts have had 20 firefighters working, Reynolds said. Callahan said he hopes council adds at least four firefighters, citing about $2.3 million in overtime over two years.<\/p>\n
What the city stressed<\/p>\n
Evans highlighted the study\u2019s findings that building fires make up 2% of fire department calls and that total calls in 2025 were 13% below their 2017 peak. The study also shows calls have risen since 2020. False alarms are 29% of calls and rose 32% from 2020 to 2025, the study found, and Evans said the city\u2019s false alarm law is worth council\u2019s look.<\/p>\n
City figures he showed put firefighters at 11.6 sick days each in 2025, against 8.3 for all city employees. Bringing that to the city average would recover about 317 shifts a year now lost to sick days, he said.<\/p>\n
Near the end, Evans read what the study calls \u201ca reasonable alternative to an immediate large-scale staffing increase.\u201d It has three parts: keep or modestly strengthen minimum staffing, sign agreements for neighboring departments with paid firefighters to send crews automatically to fires at apartment, commercial, industrial and high-rise buildings, and put added staff into ambulance service and the busiest hours.<\/p>\n
Evans began just after the sentence that precedes it in the study: \u201cFor Bethlehem, automatic aid should not be interpreted as a substitute for appropriate minimum staffing.\u201d He did read the next line, that the approach also avoids leaning too heavily on outside help for routine emergencies.<\/p>\n
\u2018In this fashion\u2019<\/p>\n
Daniels said she compared Evans\u2019 slides with the report as he spoke. \u201cI was finding a lot of discrepancies,\u201d she said, adding that some might just be page numbers being off. She asked that council get a copy of the presentation to check against the study.<\/p>\n
Daniels said she asked twice for the consultant, the Center for Public Safety Management, or CPSM, to present the study. The first request was turned down and the second got \u201czero response,\u201d she said. Evans said he answered both.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t perform my duties as a council member with legislative oversight responsibilities, with checks and balance responsibilities when information is disseminated to us in this fashion,\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n
Reynolds said consultants hand their work to the administration to present, as with the city\u2019s Opening Doors housing plan. The report\u2019s author lives in Florida and doesn\u2019t fly for health reasons, he said, but the city has no objection to a Zoom call with him.<\/p>\n
Council President Rachel Leon said Daniels\u2019 request came Oct. 14, four business days before the meeting, too late to arrange it. Committee Chair Justin Amann said council\u2019s lawyer advised that council must vote to ask CPSM to appear, and invited Daniels to make that motion. No one made it at the council meeting that followed; council next meets Nov. 4.<\/p>\n
The union\u2019s response<\/p>\n
Lou Jimenez, president of Bethlehem Firefighters IAFF Local 735, said \u201cthis was to be a fair presentation of a study\u201d and that Evans \u201cis not a fire service expert.\u201d He said shifts haven\u2019t had 24 people \u201cin years,\u201d called the focus on sick time \u201creally getting old\u201d and said calls fell because firefighters were taken off high-priority medical calls.<\/p>\n
Budgeted positions are set in the budget, not at the bargaining table, Jimenez said. \u201cShould minimum staffing depend only on negotiations or should it be addressed as a public safety issue?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Fire Chief Matthew Griffin asked that the study not become \u201ca political football\u201d and said many recommendations must be negotiated in the firefighters\u2019 contract. \u201cWe did not rush this study, and we will not rush the implementation of its recommendations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 Mayor J. William Reynolds said Tuesday his administration is \u201cabsolutely\u201d considering adding firefighter positions to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-311314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}