Northern Kentucky’s regional makeup poses competition among fire departments in hiring and retaining staff.
Fire departments across NKY are trying to compete with each other and Cincinnati by offering better benefits to attract and retain staff. Now that departments are no longer partial or fully volunteer-based, they also see fewer recruits to choose from.
“The problem with the Northern Kentucky region is we’re running paid departments on a volunteer infrastructure that was built in the mid-1900s,” Assistant Chief of Point Pleasant Fire Protection District Eric Seibel said. “Even when I started in the fire service back in 1989, there was only like three paid fire departments in Northern Kentucky and now almost every single one of them is paid.”
Seibel said it was about 20 years ago when they all started rolling over into paid departments, and at that point, finding people really wasn’t a problem because they just hired out of their volunteer pool.
Now, Seibel said there aren’t as many recruits. In addition to fewer people wanting to go into the business, the fire departments can’t hire just anyone off of the street because there isn’t anywhere for departments to send them to train.
Seibel said places like Cincinnati have its own fire academy, and jobs like law enforcement can hire anyone without experience and send them to the police academy in Richmond, Ky. Then, a few months later, they have a certified police officer to add to the force. He said there are fire service programs at places like Gateway Community and Technical College, but they require two years—unlike an academy.
Also, with Kentucky having pension reforms, Seibel said Ohio firefighters are paid more, and they have a better pension, making it more competitive across the river.
“It really is becoming, providing the best opportunity you can for your people to retain them, particularly when we’re competing with Ohio,” Seibel said.
Part of what the Point Pleasant Fire Department (located in Erlanger) is doing to create a better opportunity for its staff is merging with the Hebron Fire Department. This is not expected to go into effect until January or February according to Seibel.
Through the merger, the departments will reduce administration, including the number of chiefs. Point Pleasant’s chief is retiring, Hebron’s chief, Adam Peddicord, will remain chief of the merged departments, and Seibel will be the assistant chief.
Seibel said the department needed more mid-level managers. This allows for a better working environment, Peddicord said, because it allows people to grow in their careers, which then becomes a retention tool.
Merging with a bigger department also allows them to combine resources. One of the benefits of the merge that Peddicord told LINK nky was gaining Point Pleasants Kelly Day.
A Kelly Day is a paid scheduled day off intended to reduce a firefighter’s hours worked in a particular work period. It is a designated day throughout their schedule that they would typically work but instead are off.
“The competitiveness with it [Kelly Day] has gotten to where several departments that never had it historically have started to offer the Kelly Day in an attempt to try to retain talented people,” Peddicord said.
The Kelly Day essentially gives the firefighters an extra 17 days off a year.
Point Pleasant and Hebron are doing its Kelly Day by giving people off either on a Monday or a Thursday every three weeks, and they will have a 48-hour work week. So not only are the firefighters working fewer hours, but they also have routine time off.
The Hebron Fire Department has hired 13 people since August (as of Oct. 22) to help schedule the Kelly Days. Peddicord said they will have 18 people working a shift with three shifts. Half of those staff member’s Kelly Day will be on a Monday, and the other half will be off on a Thursday. Peddicord said this requires them to hire nine people who can backfill the group on Monday that is off and the group on Thursday.
“So those individuals are called Kelly Day Relief, and they only work on Mondays and Thursdays, and that gives them their 48 hours,” Peddicord said. “So, everybody across the board only puts in 48 hours a week, with the exception of administration.”
Seibel said the department’s Kelly Day has improved morale, recruiting and retention.
“This job is really good at sucking you in, and the next thing you know, everything in your life revolves around the job,” Seibel said. “The Kelly Day really helps people, especially with the newer generation. That’s more important to them, that they have that work-life balance because they get that scheduled, routine break every three weeks.”
Newport also implemented a Kelly Day, which happened in June when Newport’s Firefighters Union negotiated a new contract with the city.
Newport has hired 13 new people in 2024, and its full staff is 42-line firefighters plus the chief and assistant chief. The department still needs two more hires.
As far as why they have hired so many more people, Newport Fire Chief Frank T. Peluso said the fire service is in a unique time right now. He mentioned similarly to Seibel that departments have gone from volunteer or a combination of volunteer to full-time and departments are increasing the number of people they have on shift.
“There is a lot of talk about a lack of people wanting to get into this line of work,” Peluso said. “I do not believe that is the whole problem and why it is so hard to get staffing and maintain staffing. I just think there’s too many places to go.”
Newport increased its staffing from 36 to 42—part of the newly negotiated contract included six new hires.
“We have lost people to Campbell, Boone, Kenton departments,” Peluso said. “It’s benefit packages. The lack of combination volunteer departments, and the increase in staffing and the increase in full time, is in my opinion what is creating the shortage of well-trained firefighter paramedics.”
Peluso said Newport is the only department in Campbell County with a Kelly Day.
A constraint that fire departments can have in trying to be competitive is being obligated to work within their contract. For instance, Newport’s fire department benefits and pay are for the span of its contract (unless both sides want to open the contract and renegotiate things.) Other departments not held to that standard can change their benefit package whenever they want.
Both Seibel and Peddicord mentioned that they are also not able to compete with a larger city—like Cincinnati’s run volume. They said young people tend to want to work in a department with a larger call volume. Seibel said firefighters used to have to move to Hamilton County, but now they can still live in Northern Kentucky and work across the river.
Peddicord said Hebron was getting ready to lose a firefighter to Cincinnati.
“It’s just harder to compete with a bigger city,” Peddicord said. “When you have young guys that want to go and work in a big city and be busy, we’re not going to be able to compete with that. So, we have to try to be competitive in other ways and benefit packages is one of the ways that we can do that.”
