Lynnfield Fire Chief Glenn Davis is worried about the staffing retention and recruitment issues his department is facing, he said during the town’s Finance Committee meeting earlier this month.
“My biggest concern is recruitment and retention,” Davis said. “Like every other industry in the world right now, it’s hard to stay fully staffed, and it has become increasingly difficult to find Lynnfield residents who want to be called firefighters and give their services to us.”
Davis told the Finance Committee that the Fire Department will be applying for a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund four full-time firefighters to work overnight shifts in fiscal year 2025. Lynnfield was not awarded the grant for FY24.
“We were not successful last year like some departments around us were, specifically a couple of larger departments like Worcester and Haverhill that got large grants,” Davis said. “We typically ask for about a million dollars. It’s a three-year period of performance for that to offset their salaries.”
Davis said that in the last 18 months, the department has recruited eight new call firefighters who are currently enrolled at the Rowley Fire Academy.
“We hope to get them as productive, useful working members as possible within the next four to five months,” Davis said. “But over that same period, we have lost 14 of these call firefighters to full-time departments around us or it just was a realization that this job didn’t fit their life. They have other full-time careers that pay their bills. And they find it increasingly difficult to keep up with the certifications due to the hours of training and the minimum response that we require.”
Town Administrator Rob Dolan said the Select Board is looking into the issue and that it will be a focus area for next year’s budget planning.
