FOND DU LAC, WI (WTAQ) – Voters in Fond du Lac approved a public safety referendum to allow the city to hire additional firefighter-paramedics and police officers.
The $1.3 million referendum will put six more officers on the street and hire six additional firefighter-paramedics. Fire Chief Peter O’Leary says that’s a big deal.
“Our call volume has been going up at about a 5% tick. Over the last nine years, it’s been up 44% with no staffing changes,” O’Leary told WTAQ News. “We haven’t had any staffing increases in over 20 years at the fire department, so we knew that the only way we’re going to be able to get this done [with] our budgets as tight as they are, was by referendum.”
There have been points in recent years, O’Leary says, where staffing has caused some issues and close calls.
“What do we do if we get a bunch of calls? Get a fire when we take a fire engine out of service to staff another ambulance?” O’Leary said. “We were getting to a point where we were having to take, especially for medical calls, a fire engine out of service to staff one of our extra ambulances. Robbing one to pay another. The problem is, we have enough fire responses that it puts our city in a bad spot.”
Starting on January 1st, 2022 – the department will have a fourth ambulance put into service on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, the police department will be able to have more cops on the streets. Right now, they’re deploying about six to nine officers on patrol for each shift to cover a city of nearly 45,000 people.
The referendum passed by a vote of 5,085-2,355 on Tuesday.
“We’re thrilled that the public listened to what we had to say, how we presented the information and the need, and they went to the polls and voted without question that they support it,” O’Leary said.
The referendum means taxpayers will pay an additional $43 per year for property tax valued at $100,000 or more.
Comments