Council adopted Resolution No. 6903 on May 5, 2009, a resolution which updated policies 2-4 for the Fire Department. Those policies were in place because they covered subject matter that was unique to the Fire Department and not covered in the employee handbook.

With the recent adoption of the City Employee Handbook, all employees including paid-on-call Firefighters are now covered under the City Employee Handbook. With that, staff needed to make changes to existing fire department policies.

Summary of updates:

2.)   Policy No. 4 Part-Time Officers is covered under the new City Employee Handbook and no longer needed.

3.)   Attendance Policy changes:

·         Removed the policy number and only using the name and added “for Paid-On-Call Firefighters” as this policy only applies to paid-on-call and not full-time firefighters.

·         Removed "training” from the attendance percentage requirement. With the recent change to a full-time Assistant Fire Chief, training will be completed to the level needed to maintain the firefighters certifications and/or licenses. The attendance percentage requirement will apply to fire calls only.

·         Added a 30-day absence will lead to voluntary resignation. The City Employee Handbook is 3-days, which is not practicable for paid-on-call firefighters.

·         Removed the word “automatically” for excused absences. Firefighters are not automatically excused, they must make notification to a Fire Administration Officer. A Fire Administration Officer is a fire officer who can excuse them and has access rights in the system to grant them credit.

·         Updated the minimum attendance requirement from the following “three” quarters to the following “four” quarters. The original intention was that the firefighter would not be able to miss a quarter for the next calendar year and three quarters doesn’t meet that intention.

·         Removed the 75% attendance requirement for fire officer attendance at officer meetings. This is difficult to track so it was removed. The Assistant Fire Chief will be monitoring fire officer attendance and will deal with those issues as deemed appropriate.

4.)   Chain of Command Policy Changes:

·         Removed the policy number and only using the policy name.

·         Removed “Training and Engineering” from the Deputy Chief titles and removed “Station” from the Captain title to align with the job descriptions.

·         Removed the section on reporting structure. The reporting structure is the same as the ranking.

5.)   Initial Probationary Period Policy Changes:

·         Removed the policy number and only using the name and added “for Paid-On-Call Firefighters” as this policy only applies to paid-on-call and not full-time Firefighters.

·         Changed City Council to City Administrator for discharge during a probationary period to align with the City Employee Handbook.

·         Wording and grammar changes were made to the first year of probation requirements.

·         Changed first responder to EMT and made that a 2^nd year of probation requirement to align with the job description.

·         Added “training hours” to paid time and removed “however, firefighters shall not be paid for time spent attending and travelling to and from training required to complete probationary obligations” to align with other City departments for pay for required training for your job.

6.)   Uniforms Policy Changes:

·         Removed the policy number and only using the policy name.

·         Wording and grammar changes to uniform terminology.