County emergency services propose substantial pay increases for EMS; volunteers urge help with recruitment and training
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Summary
Chief Bailey presented a pay-and-leave proposal intended to raise starting EMS pay to be competitive with neighboring counties and reduce overtime costs. Volunteer fire representatives described an aging membership, training bottlenecks and a need for grant-writing support and local training opportunities.
Chief Bailey, Northumberland County’s new emergency services chief, presented a pay-and-leave analysis to the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 29 proposing significant base-pay increases for entry-level and certified emergency medical providers to address recruitment and retention.
Chief Bailey said county EMS faces persistent vacancies that increase mandatory overtime and reduce staff availability. To make entry-level pay competitive with neighboring jurisdictions, the chief recommended boosting base hourly salaries so an entry-level EMT’s total pay (including built-in overtime on a 24/72 schedule) would rise to about $53,165 annually; Advanced EMT to about $56,784; intermediate to about $61,043; and paramedic to about $65,065. Those figures are base-salary projections (before years-of-service adjustments) intended to narrow the gap with nearby counties and attract newly certified providers.
"My staff are woefully underpaid," Chief Bailey said in presenting comparative data for Westmoreland, Lancaster, Richmond and Essex counties. He and Assistant Chief Harden told the board that many employees are regularly held over on shift because vacancies force mandatory overtime, pushing overtime costs higher and contributing to burnout.
Chief Bailey and county staff also proposed revisions to annual leave accruals for field providers (the detail of the accrual schedule is under consideration) to give 24-hour-shift personnel more usable time off sooner in their service. The chief recommended maintaining the current sick-leave accrual under VRS rules but increasing vacation accrual rates for field staff so new employees can earn meaningful leave in their first months.
Volunteer fire department leaders, including Philip of Fairfields Volunteer Fire Department, urged the county to help with recruitment, retention, training and grant-writing. Philip told supervisors Fairfields’ roster averages about 48 years old and said the state-required Firefighter I curriculum—about 150 hours—can be a barrier for volunteers who work full-time. He asked the county to help identify grant-writing support and to explore local training delivery that would reduce time barriers for recruits.
The board did not vote on pay changes at the meeting but asked staff to prepare comparative figures and model the effect of proposed raises against current overtime expenditures. County staff recommended waiting until the Virginia Retirement System posts new locality contribution rates in January–February before adopting changes to the hazard-duty multiplier used for VRS calculations; staff noted the multiplier would change the VRS employer contribution from about 12.88 to 13.72 if moved from 1.70 to 1.85.
What’s next: Chief Bailey agreed to return with a cost estimate comparing current overtime expenditures against the projected salary increases, and staff will prepare the formal budget language if the board elects to include pay adjustments in the FY27 budget process.
"We need to look at improving our compensation package," Chief Bailey said. "We want to fill the holes, train people and maintain ALS service levels."
