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Fire department seeks funding for payroll systems, rapid‑response units and maintenance
Summary
Fire Department officials told the budget committee the proposed budget increases would support staffing, new rapid‑response medical teams and equipment modernization, while identifying gaps around payroll systems and dispatch redundancy.
The Los Angeles Fire Department told the City Council Budget and Finance Committee that its proposed 2025–26 budget increase would fund priorities including payroll systems integration, additional paramedic staffing and improvements to maintenance and cleaning of contaminated equipment.
Why it matters: LAFD officials said improvements would support medical response, wildfire readiness and equipment hygiene; they also highlighted ongoing payroll problems that have left some employees unpaid or underpaid for months and requested $1.7 million for a Workday integration project and related staffing to resolve persistent payroll and scheduling issues.
Details from testimony: Department leaders described planned investments in rapid‑response medical units (including an expansion of roughly 67 new positions tied to homelessness and street medicine efforts), additional mechanics and maintenance staff for apparatus, funding for professional cleaning to address carcinogenic contamination, and capital funds for dispatch redundancy and a backup operations center. Officials told the committee that the proposed payroll integration would be an eight‑month implementation with a subsequent testing period and that failure to integrate scheduling and payroll with Workday has caused multi‑year pay problems for members.
Council questions and follow‑ups: Members asked for memoranda quantifying: - The specific services and reimbursements available for medical transports and how to maximize billing (including Medi‑Cal-related mechanisms and a program identified as PPGMT); - The potential revenue impacts if film‑permit fee reductions are adopted and how that change would affect added inspection positions tied to film permits; and - The cost to paramedics and response units of prolonged hospital turnaround (delays in patient transfer) and how to mitigate ambulance “off‑load” delays.
Ending: Committee members expressed support for the department’s safety mission but requested follow‑up memos about reimbursements, programmatic recovery of costs, and options to address payroll automation and dispatch resilience.
