The borough of Haines is looking into whether to hire a fire chief as a paid position.

Annette Kreitzer, borough manager for Haines, said the fire department consists mostly of volunteers, but the volunteers are aging out, and there are fewer people to take their place.

Currently, a volunteer chief is in charge of paid firefighters. For Kreitzer, it makes more sense that the fire chief should be paid, as well.

“For many reasons. For personnel reasons, for liability reasons, for training reasons, for scheduling. All of these are something I think a paid fire chief could give attention to,” she said. Kreitzer said that from January 2022 to March 27, 2023, the fire department had 511 runs, And since January there have been 11 deaths in the community.

“That’s just quite a lot for volunteers, to keep up training, to determine the schedule that we’re under right now is an appropriate schedule,” she said.

Kreitzer said she has met with the firefighters, as well as current fire chief Brian Clay and former fire chief Al Giddings to find ways to alleviate the stresses on the fire department.

Their biggest concern she said was that the fire department would end up with some stranger from the Lower 48 coming in and taking over.

“‘We want to have trust in a working chief,’” she recalls them telling her. “Because this is not just somebody who would sit in an office. This is a working chief, just like our police chief is a working chief.”

In answer, Kreitzer would have them sit on the hiring committee, so they can be part of the process once the hiring process starts.

Based on her conversations with them, their concerns and her concerns are largely aligned.

“Solid leadership, experience, a person who is a trainer, has knowledge in training of staff. Somebody who understands the challenges in this community,” Kreitzer said.

Another issue she would like the new chief to be able to address is ambulance service.

“Is the half-percent sales tax sufficient to continue to provide the level of service that we’re providing in this community? We’ve been able to offset the ambulance budget with ARPA funds, even this year,” she said.

ARPA is the American Rescue Plan Act, enacted during the COVID-19 epidemic to assist state and local governments negotiate the crisis. But now that the epidemic is over and funding is drying up, Haines might have to charge money for the ambulance. People are worried that this may bankrupt them, Kreitzer said.

The idea is that the service could bill Medicare, Medicaid or insurance companies instead.

“What we’re contemplating is, ‘Can we capture funds that we’re not capturing right now?’” she said.

The proposed salary for a fire chief is $72,800 annually, a cost that includes benefits. Some of it would come from ARPA funds, and the rest would come from the increased revenue from property tax that the city received this year. In the future, the salary could come from the borough’s permanent fund earnings. Salary for a fire chief would be an allowable use, Kreitzer said.

Paying for the ambulance is such a big issue, and it keeps coming up.

“There have been some attempts,” she said. “I’ve just seen presentations that are in the record that have been made. And it just sort of stalls. And I think it’s because the budgets so far have been sufficient. We haven’t gotten close to just breaking even,” Kreitzer said.

Kreitzer noted that in the past few years, the borough has used ARPA funds to supplement both the medical and fire service. It’s time to look again at capturing funds from Medicare, Medicaid and insurance.

The Assembly will vote on the matter at a future meeting. The next step is that the borough will have to change its code to allow for a paid fire chief. Only after that would Haines begin advertising for the position, working with the volunteer firefighters.

The process would take about three months. That’s why the fire chief is considered a nine-month position in the 2024 budget. In the meantime, Clay would continue as fire chief.

Kreitzer was not able to say whether Clay would be a candidate for the full-time position.

Greg Palmieri, a former fire chief, was skeptical of the concept of a paid fire chief.

“I’m not a fan of decisions that don’t take the long-term consideration of potential costs into account,” he said. “Nobody has demonstrated that the management has a clear picture of where this is going to go in the next three to five years, and I think that fiscal responsibility demands that that’s the first thing they should do.”

Palmieri added that this is based on his “limited understanding” of the planning process, but he feels that the budgeting process is “short-sighted.”

“It should be a concern of every citizen. This is the responsibility of the Assembly to be critical of the budget in that fashion, and they don’t demonstrate that to me, anyway,” he said.

Haines as a whole should be looking at the long-term costs — at multiple levels, Palmieri said.

This story has been updated to correct the proposed salary of a fire chief position.