Salinas Firefighters say city needs to hire more staff

The Salinas Firefighters Association speaking out over staffing issues they say city leaders can fix. Firefighters say the heart of the issue is low staffing levels.

The Firefighters Association says there are 14 open positions that haven’t been filled. The union says it’s led to extremely overworked employees, some even leaving the department.

They say it’s been an ongoing issue and they want something done now.

“Our firefighters, they’re doing heroic things in the city everyday, they’re responding to emergencies, fires,” said Josh Hostetter, President of the Salinas Firefighters Association.

Responding to emergencies, even when it hasn’t always been easy.

“We’re working over 2,000 shifts of overtime in 2017 and about 900 of those were mandatory that we don’t have a say in,” Hostetter said.

Shifts the association says are necessary just to keep the department operating.

“When you’re down 14 vacancies, you’re talking about 20 percent of our department, there’s only 72 of us,” Hostetter said.

The Salinas Firefighters Association says the main thing they want the city to do is to hire more help.

“You’ve got to hire people to staff the fire department, this is one of the most stressful jobs there is,” Hostetter said.

The association says keeping employees is also becoming difficult.

Former Fire Chief Edmond Rodriguez left last November, as have others over the last few years.

“We can’t attract people to come work here because we’re considerably underpaid in our comparable cities so people go work elsewhere,” Hostetter said, “We’re going to do what it takes to provide the service for our community but we’re asking for the city to take a hard look at the fire department.”