Editorial: Fire cutbacks are latest in a series as budget woes overwhelm city

With overtime and health insurance costs eating into its budget, the Huntington Fire Department is sending fewer firefighters on some vehicles.

The new staffing policy took effect last week. The move came after a Cabell circuit judge ruled that the city must provide police and fire retirees with benefits under the city's old health plan, not the one implemented unilaterally by Mayor David Felinton, for four more months.

Huntington officials said the judge's ruling resulted in $400,000 in additional health insurance costs. Limiting overtime was the best way to offset the additional costs without impacting service or response time, Fire Chief Greg Fuller said. The alternative was to close one of the city's six fire stations or to take a truck out of service, he said.

This cutback in staffing has a precedent in West Virginia. The Charleston Fire Department has used the same staffing provisions that Huntington is implementing for about nine years, Charleston Fire Chief Randolph Stanley said.

Charleston is one of several paid fire departments in the state that operates with the staffing guidelines that Huntington is implementing, Stanley and Fuller told The Herald-Dispatch reporter Bryan Chambers. That's one reason that Huntington officials backed Fuller when he recommended reducing those guidelines to help offset additional health insurance costs, Felinton said.

"We wanted to avoid taking a vehicle out of service or closing a fire station because it's difficult to undo those types of actions," he said. "This is something that can be reversed very easily if our finances get better."

For years, people in Huntington have watched the level of city services decline as costs rise faster than revenues. The number of police officers has been cut back, streets have gone unpaved, and now fewer firefighters are on duty to answer calls. This cascade of cutbacks shows why city officials need to take a hard line on expenses, and they did last week in rejecting a contract with one of the three unions that represents city workers.

Every expense of city government is vulnerable to cutbacks until the long-term problems can be solved. City officials must act to rein in the city's long-term liabilities, even if it means privatizing some services. The alternative is further, unacceptable cuts in essential services.