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Interesting arguments here. I’ve always wondered about how fire departments are treated as a kind of bastard child in government and thought a lot had to do with how they were originally formed. The early NYC fire departments were borderline criminal.

I appreciate the arguments of the expense of paying a lot of money for sleepers so think the problem there is unionization.

However consider the military. That too is something that is quite expensive that you hopefully don’t need to use. In that vein I’m inclined towards having more professional departments as I like having the military available too.

“I appreciate the arguments of the expense of paying a lot of money for sleepers so think the problem there is unionization”

So leave unions out of it. Would you pay what you call “sleepers” at all, and if so, how would you score their jobs?

If a sleeper ever got called out and carried you out of your burning house, would you pay a bonus, or is that included in your base rate?

Full disclosure: my B-I-L is an urban, unionized fire captain.

Most municipal firefighter’s unions are also quite active in local politics, which has a direct impact on their salaries and pension benefits.

As departments have evolved due to the reduction in structure fires, many have quickly adopted the role of first response medical aid providers. It’s a justification for the 24/7 staffing, and it’s a relatively cheap service to provide when you have few personnel costs and can get reimbursement from medical insurers.

Almost all discussions about cost saving come down to the realization that you can get other employees to do ancillary fire department tasks, but when you do get the 3 am factory fire, you need specialists, you need enough of them, and you need them close enough that they can arrive while the walls are still standing. The discussion usually comes down to finding ways to make them useful in other ways while they’re waiting for a fire call.

A couple of decades ago, one municipality tried combining fire and police departments. It wasn’t successful for a number of reasons, including the fact that there was nobody available to direct traffic and hold back the crowds at the fire. But the big issue was cultural differences. Cop work frequently involves skills like those of a used car salesman, firefighters make their living by doing construction... backwards.

New York City -- the largest city in the U.S. and one of the most densely populated -- has about 14,000 fire personnel and EMTs. There are 8 million people in NYC, which means they have one full-time firefighter/EMT for every 530+ people.

Now translate that ratio to smaller towns and you can immediately see the problem:

1. Towns with fewer than 500 residents cannot justify the expense of full-time firefighters and EMTs -- especially when you consider how infrequently fires occur that require a major response.

2. Towns that cover a large area will typically require more fire personnel even if their population is low -- just because they'll need multiple fire stations to provide adequate response times for the whole town.

3. There are economies of scale in many fire department positions. You'll need at least one dispatcher on duty at all times regardless of whether your town has a population of 500 people, 5,000, or 50,000. The cost per resident for a town of 5,000 people will be far higher than the cost per resident for New York City ... and the town of 5,000 people doesn't have anything close to NYC's tax base.

4. I am very familiar with a town near me that has transitioned from a volunteer fire department to a mixed professional-volunteer force. The fire chief and senior officers are paid, and the officers drive the fire engines to the scene of a call. The rest of the force is volunteers. One of things I've noticed is that there is now a lot of political pressure for the municipal government to justify the expense of the paid force, so this town has seen two things that are almost non-existent in a volunteer fire department: (A) the fire department responds to each and every incident that anyone reports, and sends more equipment and staff than needed, and (B) the paid officers spend a lot of time in the community doing things like building inspections, meticulous fire code enforcement, etc. Item (B) isn't onerous because they are extremely lenient in giving property owners time to deal with violations (this is NOT being done for municipal revenue purposes), but I'd say 90% of what they're doing is a waste of time and is only done to show the residents and business owners that the cost of the personnel is justified.