Dayton officials discuss ending relief association, shifting to daytime duty-crew staffing for fire response

Dayton City officials and fire leadership at a city work session reviewed a plan to dissolve the volunteer relief association and move the department toward a daytime duty-crew staffing model, saying the change is intended to improve response predictability as the city’s call volume rises.

Fire Chief said the relief association voted March 27 to dissolve, with an effective date the chief said would be Sept. 30, 2025, and reminded council members that the City Council approved a related resolution last December (Resolution 60-2024). “The biggest thing … I wanna pass along to the city council is that the reason I'm ensuring this is because there is a cost to the relief association to dissolve,” the chief said during the presentation.

The discussion centered on why Dayton is moving away from a primarily paid-on-call model. Staff told council members the department currently has about 26 paid-on-call firefighters across two stations, and historically averages roughly 2.4 calls per day. Leadership said 78% of calls occur between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., which is the window the duty-crew model would cover. The department reported about 606 total calls last year, of which staff said 167 were…