By CHRIS LINDAHL
@cmlindahl
Daily Hampshire Gazette
SOUTHAMPTON — Debate over adding a second Fire Department shift grew heated on the special Town Meeting floor Tuesday night, fueled by a former fire chief and an ex-firefighter who questioned Fire Chief John Workman’s ability to run the department and the need to spend $135,000 to increase staffing.
A majority of voters were seemingly convinced by Workman’s call to improve the “quality of life” in town after the measure passed 54-31.
It remains to be seen whether residents’ support will continue once the bill is due.
Voters will be asked to approve the Proposition 2½ override, which would add 21 cents to the tax rate, at the presidential primary election March 1.
If it is approved, the owner of a $260,000 house would see an increase of approximately $55 per year in property taxes.
The Fire Department is currently staffed by firefighters, who are also emergency medical technicians or paramedics, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. During evening and overnight hours, the department functions on a standby basis, with firefighters responding to calls from their homes.
When no Southampton firefighters are able to respond to an after-hours call, ambulances from surrounding communities must be dispatched, increasing response time.
Workman said the $135,000 program would allow staffing inside the station from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., when the vast majority of emergency calls come in.
“An ambulance coming from our station, and shaving minutes off of response time, can make all the difference in the quality of life realized by a patient after a 911 call,” Workman said. “It could easily mean the difference between years of independent living opposed to requiring assisted living.”
Resident Mark Theroux, who was a Southampton fire lieutenant until April, immediately proposed tabling the measure.
“We all know there’s been turmoil in the department,” he said. “This may seem like a great Band-Aid to put on this situation. I think this requires much more conversation at a townwide level.”
Theroux said there’s been an exodus of staff from the department in recent months, prompting Workman to hire new blood, some of whom live far outside Southampton’s borders. He said if the override is approved, there “might not be anyone coming to help you” between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. when the department would still function on a standby basis.
Theroux’s motion failed to secure the necessary two-thirds vote.
Select Board member John O. Martin, who supported the override, noted that the staffing increase is necessary to make good on a 2013 agreement between the town and the state when William B. Kaleta served as interim fire chief.
If the department does not increase staffing by October, it may be at risk of losing all paramedic-level services.
In response to Theroux and other voters’ questioning of Workman’s leadership ability, Martin said residents ought to separate personnel conflicts from the true issue at hand.
That did not stop Kaleta from speaking up.
“The chief that the town hired, in my thoughts, is a non-working chief,” Kaleta said. “He shows up 8 to 4 and goes home… that is why we have a problem.”
Workman later mentioned that he recently responded to a call at 2:30 a.m. from his home.
Kaleta said he never had the problem Workman had in ensuring that firefighters sign up for overnight standby shifts. As an incentive to fill those shifts, Workman has instituted a $3-per-hour wage increase for time spent on calls and doubled the nightly stipend to $100.
Town Moderator Robert Floyd attempted to curb the former chief’s criticisms of Workman.
“This really gets off into a slippery slope,” Floyd said. “We need to talk to the merits or lack thereof” of the article.
Select Board Chairwoman Elizabeth Moulton, who voted against the proposal, said she was troubled that other departments that typically seek overrides at the annual Town Meeting in May were not given the chance to have one on Tuesday’s special Town Meeting warrant.
It was the arguments of resident Shawn Mitchell, who works as an EMT in Springfield, that drew the strongest response from the meeting. His minutes-long monologue on the merits of a second shift was met with thunderous applause.
“One thing that every EMT or paramedic knows, time is very important,” he said. “You can go brain-dead in 10 minutes … you can never move again, never talk again, never walk again.”
He knows firsthand, he said. One of his relatives who lives in Plainfield recently suffered long-term damage from a stroke due to the time it took for an ambulance to arrive at his rural home and transport him to Cooley Dickinson Hospital, he said.
“Trying to grind past axes or address whatever hardship politics were going on, bickering over $50 a year on a $250,000 house — it really should be beside the point,” Mitchell said. “Because if you were watching a loved one turn blue on the floor, you wouldn’t mind parting ways with that $50.”
This is the second time that Town Meeting voters have approved a $135,000 override of Proposition 2½ for the Fire Department. After its initial approval at Town Meeting in May, the measure was voted down at the town election in June.
In other action:
• Voters unanimously asked town officials to move forward with a plan to acquire temporary easements from Route 10 property owners for a state-funded sidewalk construction project;
• The Conant Park Pavilion will get a new roof after voters unanimously approved $16,000 in Community Preservation Act funds for the project.
• A new prisoner entry will be constructed at the police station at a cost of $5,000. Prisoners are currently brought in to the station through the lobby, which is a violation of state Department of Public Health standards.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at [email protected].
