Joplin police, fire have hiring signs

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December 7, 2008

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Sun Dec 07, 2008, 08:43 PM CST

By Debby Woodin

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

Firefighter recruiting is going on and new police officers are in training as part of the increased staffing voters authorized when a half-cent sales tax for public safety was approved two years ago.

But, with people retiring and others quitting after they are hired, the city constantly has the hiring sign out for police officers and firefighters.

The Joplin Fire Department experienced a setback in staffing this year after it hired six of the additional firefighters allocated from proceeds of the tax but saw seven firefighters retire or quit. Now, the Fire Department has joined other departments in a recruitment effort to try to increase the number of applicants, said fire Chief Gary Trulson.

Firefighter hiring

The Joplin City Council authorized the chief to enlist Joplin in an agreement with five other departments called the Tri-State Fire Recruitment Alliance to increase the pool of potential hires. Other departments in the alliance are Neosho, Nevada, Redings Mill, Logan-Rogersville and Strafford.

Now, applicants at any of the departments are available to all the departments. Trulson said that opens up the hiring pool for Joplin from about 40 to about 100 candidates. Members of those departments worked Thursday at Joplin’s Memorial Hall to validate a physical-ability test that all applicants will have to pass to work for any of the departments.

Trulson said application packets are available on all the fire departments’ Web sites and in the human resources office on the first floor of Joplin’s City Hall, 602 S. Main St. Basic requirements for Joplin are that an applicant must have a high-school or general equivalency diploma, and must have passed the Firefighter I and II and basic emergency medical technician courses at Missouri Southern State University or some other accredited institution.

Trulson said Dec. 11 is the deadline for applying. Hiring tests will be administered later this month. Interviews of those who pass the tests will be done in January, and new firefighters will be hired in February.

Until then, the effect on the department is that Station No. 3, on Newman Road near Range Line Road, is operating with three officers per shift rather than the preferred staffing of four, Trulson said. That staffing level will be increased to four after the new hires can be placed on duty, he said.

New fire station

Trulson is working on verifying the best location for a new fire station to be located on the west side of town, as promised when the tax was proposed. He said the reason that the west side needs a fire station is that, at last count two years ago, more than 950 homes and buildings were farther than 1.5 miles from the current west-side station on Maiden Lane.

That extends response times beyond four minutes, which not only delays rescues and damage control but affects the city’s Insurance Services Office rating and increases homeowners’ insurance rates.

There is an allocation in this fiscal year’s budget from public-safety tax collections of $1.325 million to build a new station.

Once that station is built, the tax proposal authorized the hiring of 15 firefighters to staff that station.

A second additional station, on the east side of town, also was proposed. Trulson said he is doing some initial evaluation of potential sites. The tax proposal would allow the hiring of 12 officers to staff that station when it eventually is built.

Police positions

The city proposed adding 30 officers to the Joplin Police Department with proceeds from the sales tax.

Leslie Jones, the city’s finance director, said the department has filled 19 of those positions so far, and the money is budgeted to finish adding all the positions by the end of fiscal 2009 next October. Hiring is constant, she said, to keep the staffing levels up.

Jason Burns, assistant police chief, said the department has hired six new officers who are graduating this month from the police academy.

“Those six will be placed on patrol after three weekends of in-house academy and 14 weeks of field training,” he said. “They will be incorporated into patrol as additional street officers.” The department also has hired five people who will be enrolled in the next available police academy course and cannot yet work as street officers.

This year, the department has added officers its special enforcement unit, a team that is assigned to identify core causes of crime in neighborhoods, Burns said.

Five of the 30 new jobs are designated for the department’s investigations division.

“Overall, we have increased our staff,” Burns said. “Unfortunately, some of the people we’re hiring we have to put through the academy so that although we’ve hired, it takes us a little while to get them on the street.”

City figures as of Oct. 31 showed the department had 126 positions filled on that date; it had 99 filled at the end of 2007.

People who are hired but have not yet graduated from the academy are assigned to assist with Main Street patrols and do graffiti abatement, Burns said.

The department also is to receive more than $500,000 worth of new equipment in 2009 funded by the sales tax, including a new computer system at a cost of $127,500 and several hand-held ticket writers at a cost of about $135,000. Cars and equipment, such as cell phones and laptops, also are budgeted for the new officers.

Lighting

In addition to the police and fire expenditures, the Joplin City Council at its meeting Dec. 1 approved streetlight replacements on several main thoroughfares to increase lighting for safety and to reduce operating costs. The city previously had added 188 streetlights to north and central neighborhoods.

This push will replace about 3,500 mercury-vapor lights with high-pressure sodium lights. The city staff said the sodium lights emit more light than mercury-vapor and are cheaper, over the long run, to operate. The cost to the city is $60,518 a year to operate the lights.

Tax collection

The public-safety sales tax has generated $9,487,530 since its implementation in April 2007. Since then, the city has spent $2,726,835 hiring 19 police officers and six firefighters, and buying some equipment.

Leslie Jones, the city finance director, said the remainder of the money is being allowed to accumulate to pay for future hires and for major capital expenses, such as the construction of two additional fire stations.