(file photo/battlefordsNOW staff)

By Angela Brown

Firefighting compensation

Town fire department seeing rate increase for 2021

May 10, 2021 | 9:50 AM

The Town of Battleford fire department will see a small increase to its compensation for 2021.

At its recent meeting, council approved a recommendation from the fire chief for a general compensation increase for all fire department members.

The adjustments include increases to honourariums and training hourly rate.

Fire Chief Larry Gabruch said in his submitted letter of recommendation to council the last compensation increase occurred in 2018.

“This adjustment would continue to place our department’s compensation level at approximately 75 per cent of the highest paid members of other comparable fire departments in our province,” he said.

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Gabruch said the requested amount for the compensation increase has been included in the fire department’s operations budget.

The report detailed minimum increases dating back to 2009.

Some of the proposed adjustments, for 2021 compared to 2020, would see the on-call rate increase to $18 per day from $17 per day. The general firefighting rate would increase to $23 per hour from $22 per hour. The fire chief position rate would increase to $1,200 per month from $1,100 per month.

The proposed increases for the fire department were slightly higher than the increases reflected in the town’s approved budget for 2021.

However, ultimately after some discussion council voted in favour of the rate increases as proposed by the fire chief.

Mayor Ames Leslie declared a conflict of interest and was not involved in the discussions.

Coun. Doug Laing said usually the town’s administration puts forward any increases they are considering for staff during the yearly budget deliberations. He recommended during future budget discussions the fire chief submits his proposal at that time, similar to other departments.

“It’s been a few years since he has asked. That’s why I’m not too really pressing on this,” Laing said. “But I think going forward, it has to be consistent with the other departments and also with what admin. brings to the budget table, so we can all look at it as a package and don’t kind of get hit in the middle of summer with something we didn’t budget for.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow