Assembly surprised by Mayor's EMS staffing request

The new Western Emergency Service Area, which combined the Anchor Point and Ninilchik fire departments, was created by borough voters last year. Now, to fill out its staff, the new district needs five more full-time employees.
    And while there’s a resolution coming up during Tuesday night’s Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting to fill those positions, it also includes 10 more hires for three other EMS areas.
    That came as a surprise to Fritz Creek Assemblyman Willy Dunne (dun).
    “So I was caught a little off guard,” Dunne said. “I was expecting five new employees, but I was not expecting 15 new employees, especially at a cost of over $2 million a year to the taxpayers.”
    The difference is that the five hires for the Western Area were accounted for in the budget, while the other 10 were not accounted for. Dunne is concerned the public won’t have an opportunity to comment on such a large expenditure.
    “We have tentatively budgeted through the Western Emergency Service Area through that process of creating a new service area, expanding the old one, but typically any large expansion of employees is done through the normal budget process, which we haven’t begun yet,” he said. “So I’m certainly in support of five new employees for the Western Emergency Service Area, but I believe that creating another 10 employees at the other emergency services areas go through a thorough public process.”
    Dunne says he will offer an amendment that would separate out the 10 additional positions the mayor requested, and discuss them during the regular annual budget process.
    “We keep being told by the mayor that we need cut-backs. We don’t have money to fund the schools. The schools have requested $53 million and the mayor said we can only give them $43 million. Yet at the same time he’s proposing that we create new positions that would cost several million dollars a year, Dunne said.”
    An example would be a 19-percent increase in the levy for Kachemak Emergency Services Area residents from 2.6 mils to 3.1 mils to cover two new proposed positions.
    Dunne says the service areas in line for the 10 new employees have all passed resolutions supporting the hires, but added there was no information on how it would affect their budgeting.
    “We might get away with one year of keeping mil rates steady, but with those increased costs, I don’t see how we could continue funding those new positions without an increase in the mil rate, whether it’s next year or the year after,” he said.
    The resolution will appear on the consent agenda at Tuesday night’s meeting, but Dunne says he will move to have it addressed separately. That may be the only opportunity for the public to comment on the hires, since resolutions before the assembly can be introduced and passed in one meeting.
    The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting can be heard live here on public radio starting at 6 p.m. Tuesday.