Restler asks for recruitment timeline and EMT headcount growth

Thank you so much to both of the chairs for this important hearing and greatly appreciate leadership from the department being with us today.

You know, I have appreciated your all's, I think, candor and forthcomingness in recognizing that we have a

a crisis with regard to staffing and compensation of our EMTs.

And I apologize that I've been in and out a little bit this morning, but just, you know, I think your testimony was clear and compelling that your response times aren't where you want them to be because we just don't have enough people power.

Could you speak to efforts that you're making now to increase recruitment, and what do you think a reasonable time frame is for us to expect a significant increase in our EMT headcount?

So we are partnering with the schools, colleges, trying to get the word out that we are hiring, that these are good jobs.

But the recruitment problem going back a couple of years.

Is across the country, and it's staggering us, stifling us a little bit.

And I've been, I've found each of your and the commissioners,

kind of candor again, refreshing that kind of recognizing that if we don't increase pay, that

we're going to have a serious problem and we need to resolve outstanding contract issues to make sure that workers are compensated fairly to increase the, to improve recruitment and increase and improve retention.

But, you know, recognizing this has been an issue that's going on, the contract issue has been going on for some years, that there's a nationwide shortage on workers.

Is there any kind of plan that you can share with us today or timeline for when we think things could start to improve?

You know, things aren't where we want them to be right now.

And I, you know, recognizing collectively that there's a problem is the starting point.

But then the question is kind of what are we doing to fix it and how are we going to get there?

Is there anything you can speak to of kind of how we anticipate an increase in headcount happening in the near future?

It's not a resource issue.

It's just a recruitment challenge.

We continue to run our EMS Academy.

We would like to have classes of 250, and we haven't hit that goal.

Could you speak to the current number of people who are in classes and when they'll be graduating?

Right now we have 163 in our EMS Academy.

We started with 200.

We're down to 163, and they will graduate in the middle of December, and we'll see a pretty quick impact as they hit the field.

Do you have a timeline for the next class after that?

It'll be early in the new year.

That a new class will begin and when will they graduate?

The recruitment period is open.

And, you know, I ask, we have a very robust recruitment unit.

Any event that you may be hosting or having where we can get room at a table, please let us know and we will bring recruitment there.

We also have a CPR training unit, which we love to bring, right, and inform people on the importance of CPR and be able to get that message out there.

So any events that you have, please contact us on recruitment, and we will make sure that we're able to get somebody out there to try and, you know, get people from your districts into our EMS Academy.

Well, I really– oh, go ahead.

No, I just wanted to say I really appreciate that.

I think that we want to work together to improve this.

I think that we've got the contract issue is the other side of this coin.

And if we're improving compensation, the recruitment gets easier and the retention improves as well.

And so I really hope that the administration is able to resolve this with the unions.

I've appreciated that.

This new fire department has made clear we have some serious issues among our EMS workforce that have to be addressed, and we really are excited to start to hopefully see some progress on that very soon.

We'd love to work with you more on recruitment, and so we'll be in touch on that.

And it's not for today's hearing, but I will just make a note for the record that I am committed to figuring out some solutions on some.

Tiren noise.

I know that Councilmember Brewer's, it's a passion project for Councilmember Brewer for many years now, and we'd love to work with the department to try and improve not just the well-being of our neighbors, but the well-being of staff who deal with extraordinary noise every single day.

Thank you, Chair.