City Seeks Grants to Cover Public Safety Shortages

By Mike Lednovich

Fernandina Beach's Fire Department Chief and Police Chief told city commissioners their departments are operating well below necessary staffing levels to adequately provide emergency services to the city.

The chiefs told commissioners their first responder staff were over-stressed, and the city was paying unnecessary overtime wages in order to fill the staffing gaps.

Both the fire department and police department were seeking funding from grants in order to hire three full-time first responders for each department.

The Fire Department was seeking funding through the Department of Homeland Security. The grant would pay for three years' salaries of three firefighters/EMS positions at about $995,000.

Fire Chief Ty Silcox said the department has been short-staffed for years.

"We have been under-staffed for the nine years I have been the fire chief. Before I landed here as your fire chief, the chief before me told the previous commission that we were 12 personnel below what we needed to be to meet the national standards," Silcox said. "We're still six short to meet the (national) standards."

Silcox said being understaffed the department does not have "the ability to cover vacations, sick leave and injuries that leave people out for some period of time."

He said firefighters can also suffer mental health issues from the overload of working additional hours in addition to the stress of what they experience on the job daily. "Firefighters have a 28 percent higher rate of suicide then the general population," he said.

Police Chief Jeff Tambasco said, "Last year 47 percent of the time we were with minimum staffing in our patrol division. That means we police the city with three officers, when our patrol squads (should be) five."

Tambasco said funding three additional police officers would beef up patrol squads to six officers.

"More importantly, it would give our people the time off they need, it would reduce our overtime to mandating people coming in to cover that minimum staffing. To keep our current standards, we feel this is vital and necessary," he said.

Tambasco said it takes six months to hire and train a police officer for the department.

The total costs for three police officers over three years is $1,259,865. If obtained, the Justice Department grant would reimburse the city $375,000, meaning actual costs to the City for the three new police officers over three years would be about $885,000.

The city commission voted 5-0 to apply for both grants.

Prior to those votes, Commissioner Chip Ross sought to have the commission commit to funding the police and fire positions in the 2024-25 city budget in the event the city failed to obtain grant funding.

However, City Grants Administrator Lorelei Jacobs said the best strategy to obtain the grants would be not to commit funds until the outcome of the grant applications were decided.