Starting Oct. 1, fire service — or ambulance service — will take longer to reach Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes.
That’s because Boynton Beach, which provides fire rescue services to both towns, will be removing from operation one of its two emergency vehicles now run out of the closest station.
Earlier in the month, members of the Boynton Beach City Commission had discussed closing that station all together, but the idea didn’t have support from a majority of the commission and didn’t arise again as Boynton Beach finalized its budget on Sept. 20.
But Boynton Beach saved $378,467 by eliminating six firefighter positions. The positions had been vacant, so no one was laid off. But without the positions in the budget, there won’t be the staff to operate two vehicles out of Station 1 at Boynton Beach and Seacrest Boulevards, which handles most of the calls from Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes.
As of late last month, Boynton Beach interim Fire Chief Ray Carter still was deciding whether to remove the fire truck or the transport vehicle from service.
“Of all five of our stations, it is the one with the lowest volume,” Carter said. “There’s no perfect solution. We feel like response times in that general area won’t be impacted based on the first arriving unit. The only thing is we’re going to lose some function one way or another.”
Both vehicles carry medical equipment and can act as the first response to a call, Carter explained. However, the rescue truck doesn’t have firefighting equipment, including a pump, hose, ladder and water. And the fire engine doesn’t have the capability of transporting people to a hospital.
“My understanding is we’re leaning toward pulling the ambulance out of service,” Interim City Manager Lori LaVerrier said. “With the fire truck, we could fight a fire, run advanced life support and basic life support from it. When you’re dealing with limited resources, you’re going to try to use the apparatus that gives you the most resources as possible.”
That’s little comfort to the coastal towns, which already had been raising questions about response times.
“We’ll just have to keep monitoring this issue with the ambulance service, we’ll have to find out what the impact is going to be,” said Ocean Ridge Mayor Ken Kaleel. “I did request a meeting with them, and hopefully that will take place soon.”
“It’s real short and sweet,” said Ocean Ridge Police Chief Chris Yannuzzi. “Service delayed is service denied.”
Yannuzzi, who also serves as town marshal for Briny Breezes, had sent a letter to Carter expressing his concern about what he saw as an increase in response times over the past few months. Yannuzzi said he calculates response time as the time from when a call is placed to when help arrives. In contrast, Boynton Beach calculates response time as driving time only, he said. “I’ve been concerned that there seems to have been an uptick in response times for several months, and I’ve communicated that to Chief Carter. Do they not care that somebody is paying them $1 million for service and they don’t even bother telling them they’re reducing personnel?”
Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes signed a 12-year contract with Boynton Beach for fire-rescue services in 2004. It includes an escalator of 4 percent annually. This year, Ocean Ridge will pay $875,000 and Briny Breezes will pay $293,202 for fire-rescue service.
Although the six positions were vacant, Boynton Beach had been able to fill the equivalent of those firefighters’ shifts using overtime, Carter said. With the positions eliminated from the budget, that won’t be possible. And leaving both vehicles in service presents problems when fire rescue teams need to go immediately from one call to another, he said.
“If you’re in the rescue truck and you have a fire, what do you do,” he asked. “You’re in the wrong truck. That’s a Catch-22 that we struggle with when we make these kinds of decisions.”
Carter said Boynton Beach Fire-Rescue will be monitoring so they’ll know the impact of eliminating the firefighters.
“I know the commission will ask that question. We will be developing data on a daily basis as to what that impact is,” he said.
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