Cape' fire chief laments loss of personnel; Mayor calls situation 'frustrating'

Randy Morris Jr., who has led the Cape Girardeau Fire Department since September and who became its permanent chief in April, said Monday he has a vision for maintaining top-tier service to city residents but is being held back by repeated firefighter vacancies.

"Since 2010, we've lost 29 members to resignation —and that doesn't count retirements or people who were terminated," Morris said.

Morris tells a similar story as that shared a week ago by Cape Girardeau Police Chief Wes Blair — that is, the department is not competitive when it comes to compensating its personnel.

"They're all leaving for better pay and benefits, and not everyone is staying in fire service. We've had guys leave for the railroad; another (firefighter) left to become a construction supervisor. So we're just struggling," Morris said.

In addition to resignation, the department has witnessed institutional memory walk out the door in retirement.

"I've run some statistics. We've had 20 retirements over the past 10 years and the average service time was 30 years of service. They stayed that long with us (but) times have changed," Morris said, who added his 66-person department is not fully staffed. "I currently have a spot open now that I can't fill because we did not get enough applicants. We had three openings and we just did the hiring process in July. Out of 10 applicants, we had (only) two that qualified."

Morris said in the course of 10 years, the hiring pool for the Cape Girardeau Fire Department has shrunk dramatically. In 2011, for instance, Morris said there were 21 candidates out of the 26 who applied who had the necessary training.

Drilling down

The starting salary for a Cape Girardeau firefighter is $38,563.

"It doesn't matter if a guy's been here five years or 10 years. Unless they promote up, if they stay a fireman, they'll keep earning essentially that initial pay, aside from small cost-of-living adjustments," Morris said. "Jackson's starting pay is lower than ours but they have in-step grade increases, merit hikes, and we don't. After a couple of years, Jackson firefighters are making more than we pay."

Training

"We don't add anyone to the department until (a candidate) has emergency medical technician training and Firefighter One and Two classes, which is about a year-long process. You're looking at roughly 600 hours-plus of commitment before we'll even hire you," Morris said.

"Our paramedics are highly attractive to other agencies and they can go to the St. Louis area, just a couple of hours north, and can double their salaries starting out. Paramedics are a hot topic for me. I want to provide the best medical care we can out in the field," he added.

Mayor's input

Cape Girardeau Mayor Bob Fox said he has "full confidence in the chief's assessment" of the obstacles facing the fire service.

"I just know it is frustrating to get a young person trained, then many times, they leave for more money elsewhere," Fox said.

Morris echoed Fox's view, saying, "A lot of our time is being taken up by training our new folks and it's kind of a revolving door, so all these visions of what we want to do to be an even better department are compounded by our limited staff."

Advocacy for use tax

"My message to our community is we want to provide great service and any resident of our community would want to be on the receiving end of that. The very last thing I want is to get to a point where we lose so many people that we have to make a tough call — perhaps having to shut down a fire station. I don't want to ever see that in my career," Morris said. "This use tax has passed at the state level, so the (November) vote by our citizens is going to determine if that (online sales) money is going to come to our city. I want to do something to be able to keep not only paramedics but our firefighters on the job because we've lost a lot of experience. We're a very young department right now."

Last week, Fox told the Southeast Missourian a use tax, what the first-term mayor prefers to call an internet sales tax, will generate $2.5 million to $3 million annually for city coffers.