City Council: Fire department study has more smoke than info

A fire department efficiency study doesn’t provide enough information to make decisions on cost savings and efficiencies that would allow the City of Lawton to give its firefighters pay raises without passing the cost onto citizens, City Council members said Tuesday.

It’s an issue city firefighters are watching closely as they argue that pay raises are necessary to keep the trained personnel who are leaving for better-paying jobs in other cities.

The council chambers was filled almost to capacity Tuesday night with those firefighters and their supporters, listening to the discussion. It’s also an issue expected to weigh heavily into contract talks between the City of Lawton and the firefighters union, which have been negotiating on a new contract for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. Council members were updated on those negotiations in executive session Tuesday, but took no action in open session.

City officials say missing details are the reason the study will go to the council’s Budget and Efficiency Committee, a committee initially created to oversee the annual city budget process then expanded to look at government operations as a whole.

Mayor Stan Booker said the committee was the best place to review the problem he and Ward 8 Councilman/Deputy Mayor Randy Warren identified last week: the study the council commissioned Emergency Consulting Services International to do last Fall doesn’t have all the information council members need to make decisions on pay raises and other changes in the fire department.

Specifically, the men said the council must decide on firefighter compensation, staffing needs, and the feasibility of an ambulance service.

Firefighter Nolan Berry drew cheers from fellow firefighters when he said the council must address what direction the City of Lawton will move, adding there is good data in the report that the council should consider.

Berry said the report highlights some firefighter concerns, including a staffing level balanced against the number of residents served (a number the report said is 1.76 firefighters per 1,000 residents). Berry said the department has excellent response time — the one area Lawton Fire Department tops the charts — but there are issues with pay. Lawton firefighter pay is 30 percent behind peer cities, and as firefighters advance through the ranks, that pay gap grows, he said.

“Our citizens deserve highly trained and highly paid firefighters,” Berry said, adding while the study highlights issues, city officials seem to be willing to continue losing firefighters to other cities when they need to be showing their commitment to Lawton firefighters.

Warren said the council wants to look at firefighter pay, adding the council’s original motion last year specified council members wanted to find a way to pay firefighters more without unduly burdening taxpayers. He said the evaluation was to be the basis for creating a long-range plan for the fire department, but the study provided didn’t do that. Warren said while the saw a large number of graphs and charts, he didn’t see the details on what the council specified it wanted to give them a path forward.

“We didn’t get that, in my opinion,” Warren said, adding when he submitted the issue to an AI app for analysis, AI said the report’s findings were insufficient for what the council said it wanted to know.

Warren said most of details in the motion made that night by City Council when it authorized the study didn’t make it into the Request for Proposals (a process to identify a firm to perform a duty), adding, for example, there is no financial information.

Booker said the consulting firm talked to elected officials and what they were told isn’t in the report. Booker and Warren also said there is no information on an ambulance service — the council asked about the feasibility of Lawton firefighters operating an ambulance service, since they typically are the first emergency responders at any emergency. Warren said there also are details missing on funding strategies, efficiency gains, and how peer cities do things.

Booker directed the council’s Budget and Efficiency Committee to meet (a session scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday) to analyze what needs to be done. Those efficiency discussions are to include talk about potentially closing a fire station, or closing two older stations and building a new station in the middle to serve both areas, Booker said.

“It should not cost more to live in the City of Lawton,” he said of the cost to residents for government services, compared to peer cities, adding the existing study is incomplete. “I can’t accept this study.”

Ward 4 Councilman George Gill said the council isn’t finished with the issue.

“The company met the threshold, but certainly did not answer the questions we asked,” he said.