Anchorage's fire department is expecting to overspend its current budget by about $650,000, which the fire chief Wednesday chalked up in part to higher-than-expected costs from larger call volumes -- some of which were responses to users of the drug Spice who became sick.
Fire Chief Denis LeBlanc said at an Anchorage Assembly public safety committee meeting the $92.1 million budgeted for 2015 wasn't enough to cover the department's costs.
Half the cost overrun, LeBlanc said, is due to the department having fewer vacant positions than expected. That's actually a good problem, he said.
Meanwhile, firefighters and paramedics have responded to 7 percent more calls over last year, LeBlanc said. That statistic includes an unprecedented number of responses suspected to be related to Spice, a synthetic drug. The incidents peaked in October and snarled emergency resources.
While calls have increased, fire and emergency equipment is aging, and city mechanics are in short supply, LeBlanc said. He said maintenance costs have been higher than expected this year as a result.
LeBlanc said he had a theory for part of the higher call volume: Anchorage's population is aging.
"We're seeing a lot more strokes and cardiac arrests," LeBlanc said, though he didn't have an exact estimate.
The fire department also logged about 900 suspected Spice-related calls that it didn't see last year, LeBlanc said.
At Wednesday's public safety committee meeting, LeBlanc said fire officials had identified a single suspected Spice user who had been taken to the hospital 21 times in a four-month period.
Assembly Chair Dick Traini asked whether exhaustion was a problem for first responders. LeBlanc called it a "No. 1 priority" and said he's examining how to better balance workloads and identify which first responders are not getting enough rest between shifts.
LeBlanc has lobbied for a larger budget in 2016. He said Wednesday the department is underfunded in some areas. At a proposed $93.9 million, next year's AFD budget now under consideration by the Assembly, would be $860,000 larger than the current budget, and includes funding for new positions.
While cost overruns have been typical for the Anchorage Fire Department over the years, LeBlanc pledged his administration would come in under budget in 2016.
"I don't think we've exhibited the discipline that is perhaps more common to private industry," said LeBlanc, who became chief after working as director of maintenance and operations for CH2M Hill's North Slope operations. "That's one of the things I'm taking on."