The second in a three-day series exploring rising overtime costs in the Auburn Fire Department

Volunteer firefighters have proven to be quite costly.

Both the Cortland Fire Department and the Ithaca Fire Department, two fire departments in the region who still have combination career and volunteer departments, have faced struggles in keeping the volunteer aspects of their departments thriving.

Cortland has largely managed to keep its program going, despite on-going battles to receive support funding for its volunteer program. Ithaca, however, is on its way to becoming a 100 percent career firefighter department if its budget situation doesn't change.

While it may appear that such combination fire departments would be a viable alternative for cities looking for

budget savings in public safety, fire chiefs in both departments say the dwindling volunteer market and increasing costs and standards for training actually appear to be leading to the extinction of many combination departments.

That may come as disappointing news to Auburn officials looking for creative ways to control rapidly rising overtime costs in the Auburn Fire Department. A combination of a new labor contract that mandated having at least 15 firefighters per shift and a significant spike in injuries and illness have pushed overtime this year more than twice as high as fiscal 2004.

The Auburn Fire Department has been a paid department since 1894. Auburn fire chief Mike Quill said while there are some combination departments that work well, they tend to work better for departments making the transition from a volunteer department to a paid department.

To implement a volunteer aspect into a paid department, he said, “is going backwards. It's not the same.”

Both Ithaca and Cortland began as volunteer departments. In Ithaca, there are three classifications for firefighters - career, volunteer and bunkers, or volunteer firefighters who live in the fire house and who receive more intensive training than their volunteer counterparts.

The bunker program thrived in Ithaca for many years, with Cornell University and Ithaca College providing interested students to the program.

In the 1980s, fire services across the nation began to see reductions in the number of people willing to serve as bunkers or volunteers and both of the programs in Ithaca suffered.

The city made a concerted effort to support the programs, hiring a volunteer coordinator and a municipal training officer. But when numbers began to dwindle again, both positions were eliminated, and now the department is no longer taking new volunteer or bunker applications.

“We're watching both programs wither on the vine,” said Ithaca fire chief Brian Wilbur. “Without intervention, we'll lose them.”

The bunker and volunteer programs are part of the IFD more for historical than budgetary reasons, said fire lieutenant Dave Burbank, also the public information officer with the department. If the programs were lost through attrition, it wouldn't necessarily mean the city would grant the fire department authority to hire additional career firefighters.

The department currently has four to six active volunteers and nine bunkers.

“If things continue as they are now, we'll be a 100 percent career department,” Burbank said. “It's not just Ithaca. It's a nationwide problem.”

The problem with the combination department in Cortland is slightly different in that the department still has the numbers, with about 50 volunteers total, but struggles to obtain financial support from the city for its program.

“Volunteers can be economical, but they are not free,” said Cortland fire chief Dennis M. Baron. “(The city) really doesn't look at the expenses required to support them. They think they come from the clouds and don't cost anything.”

The Cortland department, which has 36 career firefighters, relies heavily on volunteer service, though Baron said the volunteers, most who have other jobs, aren't always available when they're needed.

The Insurance Services Office, which awards public protection classifications to fire departments nationwide, in fact, only awards a 1 to 4 or 1 to 5 ratio when counting personnel for volunteer firefighters versus career firefighters.

The ISO uses personnel as one factor when determining what classification to award to a department.

Of the 50 volunteers in Cortland, only between 15 and 20 are trained to respond to fires, and Baron said the department can't count on all 15 to 20 of them showing up when called.

“Everybody's working two jobs,” he said. “Volunteer fire service used to be what you did in the community. It just doesn't exist anymore.”

The Cortland Fire Department has a minimum staffing requirement of six career firefighters for each shift. Baron said having the volunteer aspect does allow the department to set a lower staffing requirement, since there is a significant enough number of volunteers still involved.

And as opposed to the situation in Ithaca, Baron said if the fire department transitioned to a full, paid department, the city would have to hire more full-time employees to make up for the loss of the volunteer program.

“We don't have enough paid staff. The volunteers we have are working hard,” Baron said. “As long as we have people who are willing to volunteer, I don't see us asking them to go.”

Staff writer Anne Gleason can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 248 or at anne.gleason@lee.net