Yes. Due to staffing shortages and budget impacts in the medical industry, our ambulances must wait longer outside the hospital before their patients can be seen by a doctor. This ties up our personnel and equipment which leads to longer response times, which have increased by over three minutes in the past five years. Since we have to travel at least 30 minutes to reach the hospital, which means being out of Ripon for approximately 90 minutes each call. This trend greatly concerns us.

Yes. Due to staffing shortages we and other fire agencies are experiencing throughout California, we are requiring our first responders to work more mandatory overtime than ever. This leads to burnout and turnover and trying to recruit high quality personnel when we offer the lowest pay and benefits in the county. Our strong reputation and excellent service help immensely with recruiting but our pay and benefits make it more difficult to recruit, now more than ever. W used to have over 15 firefighters respond to job applications and now, it’s typically below 5 people who apply.

Yes. And we are seeing the effects of that in several key areas. Due to longer wait times for patients to be seen in emergency rooms, we often have concurrent calls. If we don’t have the personnel and equipment available to respond to calls ourselves, we must rely on outside agencies to serve our customers. If we open a second fire station, we will have more personnel to serve you and a second location in our service area to serve the growing number of people in our community. We have tried two times to obtain additional funding in the past 10 years, but the ballot measures did not pass. When the last assessment was approved for Ripon Fire in 1985, there wasn’t an escalator to keep our funding up with inflation and other increasing costs. We are working hard to educate our customers about our budget problems and how they impact our service to them.

Yes. Due to our budget situation, we are cutting important items from our budget and are unable to compete with the salaries and benefits of neighboring agencies. That adds to recruiting and retention problems, mandatory overtime, and first responder burnout. We need to fix this.

Yes. We do not currently have the funding necessary to staff either of the two fire stations that have not been used. Years ago, we took advantage of Redevelopment funds to add an additional station in the City built to accommodate growth in population and the number of structures we protect from fire and other emergency incidents. If we can staff Station 3 near the intersection of West River and Ripon roads, we would have additional personnel and equipment and provide service from a second location in our service area. Opening a second station would help reverse the trend of slowing response times. Right now, it takes three minutes longer to respond to calls than five years ago. And, we see the response times becoming longer every year if we can’t add much-needed personnel and equipment and respond to calls ourselves rather than relying on neighboring agencies.

Yes. We haven’t had a rate increase since 1985 and that assessment did not include an escalator to account for inflation or increasing personnel costs. That’s caught up to us. We cut important items like filling senior positions, training and equipment costs. For example, by not filling the Assistant Chief or Fire Marshal position, we are able to use that money to hire and retain existing personnel.

There are several reasons: Across the nation, fire agencies are struggling to fully staff their stations. Five years ago, we would have had 15 applications while we didn’t get any applications on two recent rounds of hiring. We used to have a robust volunteer firefighting program of over 60 personnel. Now we are down to four. We offer some of the lowest pay and benefits in the county, which adds to recruiting and retention problems. This leads to burnout due to the amount of mandatory overtime our first responders are required to work. We recently filled two critical positions with top-notch personnel but lost them to other agencies for higher pay. It’s getting more and more difficult to fill positions now. We need to offer more competitive pay and benefits to ensure we can hire the best personnel and keep them for years to come.