Councillors gave the fire department permission to hire 32 new firefighters at a cost of $3.3 million, but the impact on taxes and insurance premiums isn’t clear.
Twenty of those firefighters will staff under served stations in Bedford, Eastern Passage, Cole Harbour, and Lakeside. Adding those firefighters will bring the number of firefighters to the recommended level of four per truck.
READ MORE: Latest Halifax firefighter staffing proposal would cost millions
The other 12 firefighters will staff two aerial trucks, one on each side of the harbour. The decision to staff the aerials with two firefighters instead of four goes against repeated requests from fire chief Doug Trussler who told councillors and the media again Tuesday, that “four is the optimum number.”
Staffing aerials with four firefighters was recommended in the fire underwriter’s survey Trussler said, because failing to do so could lead to “increased insurance premiums collectively in the surrounding areas.”
WATCH: Fire chief Doug Trussler responds to council’s fire station staffing decision
Despite deciding not to staff aerials with four firefighters, councillors did improve the aerial service a bit by agreeing to staff a second one in Dartmouth. However, it’s not clear what the partial move will mean for insurance premiums for homeowners and businesses.
“I don’t know what effect its going to have,” Trussler said. Underwriters “have a very complicated system of analyzing and setting what the classification will be.”
READ MORE: Halifax councillors reject latest firefighter staffing motion
Councillors passed a motion to apply all costs of the changes directly to the tax rate but Deputy Mayor Matt Whitman said he thinks the extra costs aren’t high enough to lead to a tax hike.
“There’s no tax increase based on what we did,” Whitman said.
WATCH: Deputy Mayor Matt Whitman explains the decision on fire station staffing
However, interim chief administrative officer John Traves told Global News, it’s too soon to say whether it will lead to a tax hike or not.
The changes passed on Tuesday end more than a year of debate on how many firefighters Halifax needs and where they should be stationed. Two weeks ago, Trussler’s recommendation to relocate career firefighters from some stations that were redundant to other areas that needed firefighters was rejected by council. That recommendation would have led to two fire stations in the urban core being staffed by volunteer firefighters on evenings and weekends.
Under Trussler’s recommendation from Jan. 12, the fire department would have hired ten additional firefighters, rather than the 32 it is now directed to hire.
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