Firefighter positions survive budget cuts in Barrington

An initial motion to eliminate all budget increase requests in Barrington was amended to include the money for four new firefighter positions.

At Tuesday night's meeting for the Barrington Committee on Appropriations, officials first recommended that both the school department budget increase request and that of the municipal government, be eliminated and that the current budget levels be continued for the upcoming fiscal year. (The committee on appropriations also called for a slight reduction to the capital requests budget.)

$1.2 million school budget increase eliminated.

According to officials at the meeting, that motion passed, but was later amended to include $269,885 for the addition of four new firefighter positions. The amendment was then voted upon, said officials, and passed.

Initially, municipal government officials had requested an increase of $361,717, the majority of which would fund four new positions in the fire department. 

Barrington Town Manager Jim Cunha has said that the fire department staffing is below what guidelines suggest and can result in longer wait times for residents in need of fire department assistance. 

By increasing the total fire department staffing, Barrington can ensure that two rescue squads are available nearly all of the time.

"Calls for rescue service over the past ten years have increased by 49 percent," wrote the manager in his budget narrative, "from 1,334 in 2006 to 1,991 in 2016. Rescue mutual aid calls during the same period increased by 43 percent."

Mr. Cunha said in prior interviews that adding the four new firefighter positions will also result in additional revenue for billing rescue runs. He estimated that the additional billing would be about $40,000 per year, dropping the net expense for the new positions to about $230,000.

The additional positions will increase the fire department's overall budget from $1.97 million to $2.23 million. 

While the municipal budget request was trimmed back, the school department's entire $1.2 million increase request was eliminated.

The capital budget was reduced to $1.1 million.