Fire chief seeks dedicated training role to expand prehospital capabilities; city staff say mutual‑aid billing roughly offsets runs

Fire Chief Bill McClellan presented a proposal for a dedicated training position in the fire department at the May 28 work session, telling councilors the role would “increase our prehospital capabilities” and allow the department to implement advanced prehospital care and training partnerships with hospitals and the Department of Transportation.

McClellan said the position would support advanced interventions such as rapid sequence intubation and the use of blood and antibiotics in the field, and would also help with succession planning as long‑time staff retire. He added that the department wants to stand up a commercial‑driver‑license training site to manage certification and documentation for personnel and that freeing up office time for line supervisors is part of the rationale.

On mutual aid and cost recovery: McClellan told the council that, over recent reporting windows, mutual‑aid runs and the associated billing generally come out even or slightly ahead once revenue from billed transports is accounted for. He said the department can provide reports in different formats and that he can supply additional metrics at council request.

Next steps: Councilor Bagley said she is likely to make a motion at the June 9 meeting to add the training position and some school mental‑health positions. The city manager noted that the slide shown to council included salary and benefits estimates and that the full cost of adding several charter‑department requests would increase the proposed budget by just over $1 million if all were granted.

Ending: No formal action was taken on May 28; the proposal will be considered as part of the June 9 budget deliberations.