LEBANON — Citing safety concerns for city residents and fire department staff, the Lebanon Firefighters Union is mounting a public information campaign and calling on the City Council to authorize eight new positions in next year’s budget.

City Manager Shaun Mulholland’s proposed budget for next year includes one new full-time position. He has proposed adding one position annually for the next eight years.

Joel Coelho, president of the union, described the city manager’s proposal as “totally inadequate,” in a Tuesday email.

The conflict renews an old debate between public safety and the cost to taxpayers of expanding city services.

Adding one firefighter to the city budget costs roughly $142,000 in salary and benefits, so eight more positions would cost about $1.1 million. 

Lebanon Fire Department, which has added one net position since 2007, has 25 firefighters spread between two stations. Meanwhile, call volume has increased by about 60%.

Lebanon’s population was about 14,000 in 2020, which was up from 13,000 in 2010. The daytime population is much higher because of the number of commuters.

The department had the highest call volume by member in New Hampshire in 2023, Fire Chief Jim Wheatley reported in an October 2023 City Council meeting.

Last October, Wheatley applied for a federal grant to fund eight new full-time firefighter positions for three years. The City Council supported the grant application, 7-2. At the time, councilors encouraged Wheatley to increase the grant application from four to eight positions. Lebanon did not receive the federal grant.

Meanwhile, the city’s demand for services continues to grow. This year, the department is projected to have the highest call volume in its history, according to the 2025 proposed city budget.

Current staffing levels put firefighters at risk, Coelho said. They are reaching burnout and the city is not adequately protected, he said.

He said he fears that the “last chip to drop” will be firefighter retention. Overall, the fire department’s employees are relatively young and not especially attached to the area, meaning there is little stopping them from pursuing jobs in communities with lower call volumes per firefighter.

“We, as a bargaining unit, for years and years have grinned and bore it and hoped that the City Council would do right by us and they never have, so we finally hit our breaking point,” Coelho said in a recent interview.

For Mulholland, however, there’s a math problem to solve. The 2025 city budget does not have room for eight new positions, he said.

“There’s clearly a need for additional firefighters, but in my view the city can’t afford to add eight people at one time,” he said in a Thursday interview.

Discussion of the 2025 budget began at an Oct. 16 City Council meeting, when the council reviewed the proposed Capital Improvement Plan. On Tuesday, city councilors discussed an overview of the proposed budget and there will be five budget work sessions before the public hearing and vote on the proposed budget Dec. 18. The Fire Department budget is scheduled for review at a Nov. 14 work session.

Mulholland and city councilors said 2025 is a difficult budget year. The budget is expected to increase the municipal tax rate by nearly 12% in 2025. In the coming years, the city is also facing budget increases as bonds will have to be repaid and certain funds are quickly depleting, according to a presentation by Mulholland at an Oct. 29 City Council budget work session.

While fire department staffing presents a safety issue, Mulholland said that is not unique to the department. Funding for the police and public works departments also affect resident safety.

“There’s a number of issues and needs for staffing in multiple departments and there have been for years, and we’ve been addressing those when we can, but we can’t address all those needs at once.”

The city has recently invested a considerable amount of resources into the fire department in the form of a new $22 million downtown fire station and about $3 million worth of new equipment that is currently on order, Mulholland said.

The fire station replacement is funded by a bond and factors into the capital improvement budget over several years, not the general operating budget.

“Those are two very separate conversations and I struggle to tie the two of those needs together,” Wheatley said of the fire station project and staffing issues.

While he agrees that there is a need for additional staffing, Wheatley said he is looking for a more “creative way” to fill the need that places “the least burden to the taxpayers.”

“The one (position) is not what we need, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Wheatley said in a Thursday interview.

In recent weeks, Coelho and the firefighters union have held signs outside City Hall, delivered letters to Lebanon residences and are maintaining a robust social media presence to call attention to the issue. The union is asking residents to contact their city councilors and seeking signatures on a petition to hire additional firefighters.

The Fire Department was “arriving at major emergencies with inadequate staffing” based on standards from the National Fire Protection Association and National Institute of Safety and Technology 79% of the time in 2023, according to a memo submitted by Wheatley.

As much as two to three times per day, a single person responds to a 911 call, Coelho said. The NFPA recommends four firefighters respond to all fire calls in a city with a composition like Lebanon and at least two members are needed for an ambulance call.

“We’re putting a single person in a position where they might run up on a burning building with somebody trapped inside. We always accept that there is some risk, but the risk is at a much higher rate,” Coelho said about overlapping calls.

City Councilors Karen Liot Hill and Devin Wilkie said in interviews that residents have contacted them with concerns about fire department staffing.

With the call volume and staffing pressures, “I understand why the firefighters are asking that City Council consider adding positions to the budget directly,” Liot Hill said. She said that Wheatley’s presentation last October clearly showed a safety concern.

“We are looking at a lot of pressure in the city budget and that means a lot of pressure on taxpayers and so there are going to be potentially some very difficult choices to make,” she added.

However, Liot Hill also cautioned against the council putting the increases off.

“When you put things off the need doesn’t go away. The fire station was put off for decades and the situation got to the point where the building was no longer meeting the needs of a 21st century fire department,” she said. “…Adding staff to the fire department has also been deferred for a long time.”

Liot Hill supported Wheatley’s application for eight positions last year, Mayor Tim McNamara did not. Instead, McNamara said at the time that he would have supported the four positions Wheatley originally requested.

Now with no grant funding on the table, McNamara said in a Thursday interview that he is “considering” how many positions the city should fund and has not made up his mind. He said he understands why the union is requesting more positions and expects a “robust conversation” during Nov. 14 budget discussions.

“There isn’t anywhere obvious to me where we could cut and make up the cost of these positions without having impact somewhere else,” McNamara said. “If we’re going to add positions that’s going to increase the budget.”

The Nov. 14 budget discussion is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.