The Cariboo Regional District is reviewing how much it pays its volunteer fire department chiefs, following a proposal from one of the directors.
Area L (Deka Lake, Sheridan Lake, Roe Lake and Bridge Lake) director Eric de Vries said some fire chiefs are in charge of more than one hall.
During the board meeting Thursday, Nov. 9, de Vries proposed the CRD use a formula to determine remuneration based on additional halls with the minimum of 10 members responding and to add 0.5 of the remuneration for each additional hall.
“A fire chief who has more than one hall to manage has to spend more time and effort and should be remunerated as such,” he said.
Currently, fire chiefs are being paid $5,000 per year across all departments.
“This amount has not changed for 20 years,” confirmed CRD manager of communications Gerald Pinchbeck. “The 2024 budgets for each department propose increasing this amount to $12,500, and have not received final approval from the board.”
De Vries said some chiefs have chosen to re-divert part of their remuneration into other items of their budget, which is their right and a good thing to do.
CRD chair Margo Wagner said there is a lot more work the chiefs are doing.
“Most chiefs make all the call-outs, there’s very few that don’t make all of the call-outs because they are usually first responder and fire and they usually attend both,” she said. “My chief is at the hall before practice starts and she’s there an hour later and a lot more in between.”
De Vries said a lot of the work they are doing is for maintenance issues, and sometimes for more than one hall.
“If it’s radio systems in your trucks, they come for everything. The chief organizes all these things and it is extra work for all the halls.”
Area A director Mary Sjostrom said she hears about some firefighters work 10 or 12-hour shifts.
“In order to keep our fire halls we are going to have to pay. In my opinion, I think it’s well worth it,” she said.
Area G (Lac La Hache, 108 Mile Ranch) director Al Richmond, said he thinks they need a deep dive into it and input from staff.
“Is it fair to say if you have two halls you get more money? One hall could have as much apparatus as two halls right? It’s a lot more complicated.”
The board received the request and then voted in favour of requesting a report from staff.
Wagner asked what other fire departments do and Cody Braaten, manager of protective services replied it is “all over the place.”
Braaten told the board it will be difficult to come up with a way to be fair when there are multiple halls, multiple different levels of service, size of budget, number of properties and number of calls.
“There is no right way to do it currently from all the research we did about this a year go,” Braaten said.
Wells mayor Ed Coleman said you also have to factor in captains and deputies.
“You have to get some kind of metric that operationally can keep them all stabilized and be fair amongst them as well,” Coleman said.
