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Orono Fire Needs Assessment <br />47 | Page <br /> <br />operation with an average annual workweek of 50 hours. This is a traditional firefighter work <br />schedule and under Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a firefighter can work 53 hours per week <br />without overtime. This model would also require a full-time fire chief, fire marshal, training <br />chief and an admin. There are federal grants available to cities which assist with the phase in of <br />the full-time personnel over a 5-year period. Bloomington Fire just recently was awarded one. <br />Alternatively, Orono could start with a single crew available 24/7, which would require 12 – 16 <br />full-time personnel. This would be a financial advantage since most of the calls for service are <br />handled by a single crew. However, it would not be effective for simultaneous incidents and <br />may not be enough for a complicated auto extrication or other calls that require more <br />personnel to safely conduct operations, requiring mutual aid for all of those calls for service. <br />This model would still require a full-time fire chief, fire marshal, training chief and admin. <br />Plymouth Fire recently went to a model similar to this one. <br />5.3.2 Combination Fire Department <br />This model provides a single-company of career response (12-16 full-time personnel) and <br />utilizes the POC members of the department to supplement the career response for <br />simultaneous incidents and to provide safe numbers of personnel at structure fires and other <br />incidents requiring more personnel. This may be an attractive model because it reduces <br />personnel costs as compared to career departments but allows for a larger effective response. <br />There are complications managing a Combination Department because career and POC staff <br />have differing priorities. Some POC might feel like they don’t get enough calls to make the time <br />they spend training worthwhile. This model is frequently used during a transition between POC <br />and career operation models. It is likely that one station could house both POC and career staff <br />and the other would house just the POC staff. This would still require a full-time chief, fire <br />marshal, training chief and admin. <br />5.3.3 Duty Crew Fire Department <br />This model assigns POC personnel to take shifts during the day/week so that at least four <br />people are at the stations during peak call times or during times when few personnel are <br />available to respond from the workplace (traditional business hours). Personnel would sign up <br />to cover the shifts they wanted and unclaimed shifts might be covered by firefighters from <br />mutual aid partners as part-time firefighters. The on-duty personnel would be paid a standard <br />hourly rate. The challenge with this approach is finding availability from current personnel <br />because they might need to take time off from their day jobs. This model is most successful <br />where there are many POC firefighters that can spread the shifts among them. There is <br />typically a minimum number of hours of on-duty time per month. <br />An alternative approach to duty crews is to hire part-time firefighters from outside the <br />organization or from mutual aid companies. Typically, these are individuals who may work as