BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Telegraph Editor
STARKE — Beginning April 1, Bradford County Fire Rescue will be down one crew because of a county hiring freeze.
Director Allen Parrish said the loss of two more employees brings the total number of vacant positions in the department to five. It takes six employees to staff an ambulance 24-7, so one has to be cut.
The resulting savings will be around $500,000 a year, or around $200,000 for the remainder of this fiscal year.
The station taking the hit is Sampson City, but it is not being abandoned. The “dual-purpose station” will be staffed with a crew of paramedic firefighters who will be able to respond to calls with either an ambulance or firefighting apparatus — not both.
“We’ve kind of cut everything we can cut, and so now we’re down to response units,” Parrish said, adding there will definitely be a reduction in service. “There’s no way to avoid that.”
Fuel costs could also eat into many departments’ attempted savings. Parrish said they budgeted around $2.80 a gallon going into this fiscal year, but the price paid is now over $4.50.
“We’re doing $18,000 to $20,000 a month in fuel,” he said.
Fortunately, call volumes have dropped post-COVID, and they plan on renegotiating what the hospital pays them for interfacility transports given the higher fuel costs.
“I believe that, although we’re within budget, I believe that we’ve heard the board loud and clear. We’ve heard Mr. Sexton loud and clear. We need to cut everywhere we can,” he said. “So we’ll be doing that beginning April 1. We really don’t have a choice there. We either do that, we fill the positions, or we pay overtime to fill those positions, and we all know we can’t afford that.”
