'A wake-up call': Shawnee fire station closing intermittently due to staff, funding issues

SHAWNEE — Issues between city management and the fire department could be causing response delays in Shawnee, as one station has temporarily closed due to low staffing.

Station 2, newly rebuilt at 1401 N Bryan Ave. on Shawnee’s east side, closed Tuesday, according to the local firefighters’ union. It also had closed four other times in late May.

The fire department said they have closed the station on days when not enough firefighters were available to maintain minimum staffing levels. The department hoped to hire firefighters to keep the stations fully manned, but city management said funding for the extra positions has not been secured and needs to be decided by Shawnee residents.

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“Station 2 is lucky to have three people there on any given day, and it’s never really been fully staffed,” said Patrick Winsett, president of Shawnee’s firefighter union. “But trying to run a truck at Station 2 with just two people is a huge safety issue because if they get to a fire, you’re going to have one guy pumping the truck and one guy stretching the water hose line. It becomes a safety issue where there’s not enough support, and we’re not trying to put our guys in that situation.”

A plan was in place to hire three more firefighters, one for each station in Shawnee, but new City Manager Andrea Weckmueller-Behringer said funding was not available to support that many new firefighters.

“We did not approve any new position requests because we do not have enough recurring funding,” said Weckmueller-Behringer, who was appointed as city manager in October 2021. “55% of our budget is one-time funding, and it cannot be used for ongoing operations and maintenance, including personnel. It just does not allow us to add any new positions.”

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Residents concerned about response times, insurance impacts

Stations 1 and 3, located more centrally in and closer to densely populated areas, are kept open for practical purposes, and closing Station 2 affects fire department response times less severely.

“Does it have an impact on response times? Yes, it does,” Weckmueller-Behringer said. “Is there a true quantification? No, nobody has done this math, because we don’t really shut down Station 2 unless we absolutely have to.”

But Station 2 services several communities, including the Shawnee Country Club, Granada Country Estates, Larkins Meadow, Windmill Ridge, Woodsong and the Enchanted Forest neighborhoods. Local schools, such as Pleasant Grove, South Rock Creek and Sequoyah, also are in the area.

Residents, unsure on why the nearby station is closed if their tax dollars support it, are also concerned about the area’s safety if funding issues persist. Trevor Robertson, who lives near Station 2, is one of them.

“If a fire broke out here tomorrow, the reaction time would be 15 minutes, instead of two,” Robertson said. “I’ve got a 93-year-old grandfather in the neighborhood, and parents and in-laws. If something were to happen to them, at least Station 2 was right there. But I don’t see personnel cars there anymore. It’s just wrong.”

Robertson also expressed concern for how an inconsistently operated fire station might affect property values and insurance rates for the area.

“All these neighborhoods are paying insurance, and if this goes on long enough, it’s going to go through the roof,” he said. “And that would start suddenly. If something doesn’t get resolved soon, it would only be a matter of ‘when.’”

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Currently, one fire department position unaffected by funding disputes is available for hire. Thanks to a surge of recent applicants, that one new employee is expected soon, but Robertson isn’t sure why the position hasn’t been filled more quickly.

“It seems silly to me, but I’m not a political guy,” Robertson said. “I don’t understand all of what they do.”

The city manager said the spread of misinformation online wasn’t helping public understanding of the situation, but she also admitted the city needed to do more to create educational opportunities on how to address the funding issue.

“To be quite frank, the one thing I’ve noticed when I first came on board is that the city (of Shawnee) has not always done an excellent job sharing information,” Weckmueller-Behringer said. “Municipal budgeting is complicated and can be hard to understand, but that should not have stopped us from trying to explain what funding can be used for what purpose.”

No new hires without more funding, says city management

The Shawnee Fire Department requires at least a 12-person staff for its “red-blue-green” system, through which firefighters rotate their round-the-clock shifts.

Forty-eight firefighters serve the Shawnee area, and the fire department uses nearly 25% of Shawnee’s budget. Nearly 60% of Shawnee’s budget is allocated to public safety.

“The fact that we have such a large percentage of one-time funding, because we are working on several major capital improvements for which we received that one-time funding, I cannot pull from that funding to fund more firefighters,” Weckmueller-Behringer said. “I physically cannot do this without finding additional recurring funding.”

'Time to amend the budget' before July

The fiscal year for the city of Shawnee does not end until June 30, and the current budget proposal has not yet been approved. The next city commissioner meeting is Monday, where the budget will be presented and firefighters and city officials hope an agreement may be reached.

“They have time to amend the budget, and we’re just hoping to find out some things and get the ball rolling in the right direction,” Winsett said.

Winsett said no one in the fire department is trying to put the blame on the new city manager, who he said “inherited” the issue from what appeared to be “poor planning on the city’s part.”

“She’s just trying to do her job, and we understand that, but ... this is just long overdue, and we don’t want to be unsafe anymore,” he said.

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Winsett compared last year’s 6,000 emergency calls to the average 700 calls in the 1970s, when the city had 45 firefighters. Over the past 50 years, fire staff has only increased by three, and the city sometimes has to depend on mutual aid from volunteer firefighters elsewhere if fires spread out of control.

“Our hope is that the public will do what they can to help the fire department, because our guys really need it. We really need more personnel. This is more or less a wake-up call.”

'Not an easy problem to solve' without fees, taxes

Weckmueller-Behringer said the only solution is to figure out ways to increase continuous revenue for the city.

Three proposals include an additional local sales tax voted on by city residents, a utility charge for every water and sewer line, or a property tax increase in line with the state’s new Public Safety Protection District Act.

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With cost-of-living increases over the past decade, the city manager foresees problems with getting any additional taxes or fees passed by vote.

“It is not an easy problem to solve,” Weckmueller-Behringer said. “The fastest out of those three options would be to pass an additional connection fee for every single utility we have, but that has to be a measured response, and our citizens are dealing with financial difficulties enough as it is.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Shawnee fire station closed intermittently from lack of staff