6. Staff Report 2021 Fire Dept hiring
Staff Report
Date of Meeting: May, 5 2021
To: City Council
From: Mike Hinz, Fire Chief
Re: Approval to Hire
Background:
Scandia fire department currently has a roster of 21 employees. Our goal personnel number is 30, this number
was derived from the fact that we are a paid on call department and not every employee is available all the time.
A medical response call requires 4 personnel, a motor vehicle accident requires 9 personnel on average and a
structure or wildland fire requires at least 16 personnel for the initial response, but will use 30-40 personnel by
the time the fire is extinguished.
For this reason we have requested to hire up to 5 personnel every year, until we can reach our goal.
Issue:
Should the council approve hiring 4 new members?
Proposal Details:
Scandia Fire and Rescue would like to hire 4 applicants; William Mattheisen, Jeff Firkus, Matthew O’Brien &
Mark Fitzgerald conditional on passing Osceola hospitals physical & medical testing and a Criminal
background check. These 4 applicants have completed & passed the interview process, agility test at the fire
station.
Fiscal Impact:
The fiscal impact per year per employee is estimated at $2,000. This includes certification classes (EMT & FF1
each class $1600), hourly wage during in-house training and hourly wage for responding to emergency calls.
One of the candidates is already an EMT so we will see a savings there.
Options:
(1) Approve the conditional hiring of William Mattheisen, Jeff Firkus, Matthew O’Brien & Mark Fitzgerald
(2) Approve conditional hiring of some of the candidates
(3) Not approve hiring of any personnel
Recommendation:
Option (1).