The Syracuse Common Council's Public Safety Committee, chaired by Councilor Donamore, held a budget hearing on April 21, 2026, to review the Fire Department's operations and fiscal year 2027 budget request. Fire Chief and First Deputy Chief Elton Davis presented an overview of departmental operations, staffing, call volumes, and budget needs. The department is requesting a 2.9% increase over its combined civilian and sworn budget, citing contractual obligations, rising costs, and the need to maintain safety amid growing call volumes and economic development.
Good morning. Um morning everybody, I'm Counselor Donamore, head of public safety, and we're here today to talk about the fire department budget. I have with me Counselors Hudson, Counselor Nave, Counselor Caldwell, Councilor Monte Monto, President Pantiagua, Counselor Williams, uh Fire Chief. And I don't know that this is first deputy chief Elton Davis. Oh, and first deputy chief Elton Davis. Thank you for being here. I'll give it to you, Chief. Okay, I'll start off by just doing an overview of our operations and then get in uh to some budget stuff, uh, overview, and then I'll allow for questions on anything you guys have. I'll start off by saying, you know, our uh what our fire department does is physically and uh mentally demanding, it's complex and critical for the safety of our city. Um basically simply put our constituents call us on their worst day, they trust and they call us when they need our help. Um we have eleven strategically located fire stations that house ten engine companies, six ladder companies. Um there's four people on each of those apparatus. We have a rescue company that has seven members, and we have an eight-person hazardous materials team that doubles as an engine company and a trunk company, and they operate out of station five on North Geddis. We have 75 firefighters on duty, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and every call that we're dispatched to, we answer every call. Um 92% of our staffing, um it's I have a handout if you look at our staffing, 92% of our staffing, um they work on the front line on fire trucks that leaves eight percent of us, um you can see some of our staff that are in the back of the room here, eight percent of us our support staff across eight divisions um that make up our operation that help make our operations efficient and effective. Um our support staff during the day, Monday through Friday, and they do also responses um to emergencies. Um we have eight different divisions, training division, maintenance division, our communications, EMS, special operations, we have an emergency management group, health and safety office, our fire investigation unit which investigates every fire in the city, uh, per state law, um and we have an administration and um the fire chief and the first deputy chief deal with internal affairs functions, and that supports our mission um with our frontline firefighters. Um and a lot of people think um you guys know but um people think fire suppression is all we do, but that's not it. Uh we have a broader mission, um it's fire prevention. Um we do a lot of fire inspections with our fire marshals. Last year we did over eleven hundred fire inspections on scene of uh locations. Uh we do fire education. We had over 1,500 interactions with our constituents in the city. Um last year we reviewed six hundred and twelve plan reviews for construction permits we work with hand in hand with the department of code enforcement. Our EMS response, we do a ride out range of medical emergencies from difficulty breathing to somebody's heart stopping or somebody's stopping breathing. So we do all the different high priority um EMS calls. Um, like I stated before, we do hazmat incidents that involve dangerous and toxic materials. Uh just the other day we had a call with um something as simple as there was um two um 50-gallon drums of formeldehyde up against the building, and our team goes and we stabilize the incident um the situation uh for our constituents, and they are the county wide hazmat team, and they're also um dispatched um to multiple counties if needed because of their tech um skill. Um we have a technical rescue team um that's our rescue company. They do uh confined space, rope rescues, trench rescues, water rescues, and they deal with any kind of collapse hazards, and they also respond to every vehicle accident in the city. They stabilize the car, um extricate patients if needed, and we provide patient care with our engine companies. One of um the second page that you have in your handout is our alarm responses. Last year we responded to 25,863 calls. Um the last few years we've had record-breaking amounts of calls. Last year was another high year. Um I would say that historically these have been high years, but I think this is just the norm now, this amount of calls. Um so far this year, we responded to 7,786 calls. Um we're on pace to have 26,800 calls, and that's a 23% increase from 2021. Um typically our call volume in the city is half of the call volume that fire departments in the county answer. So we are a very busy fire department, one of the busiest in the state. Um the next page um has our major fires, and that's a fire where when we pull up, there's heavy smoke and fire uh showing out of windows and roofs and really bad situations for our constituents. Last year we had 80 fires. So far this year we have uh 28. Um, we're having a fire every three or four days this year so far. Um we're on pace to have 96 major structure fires. Um over the last four years, we averaged 82 fires um a year. Um in those fires. Last year we made um some heroic um actions. We rescued eight civilians out of those fires. Um so far this year we've rescued 11 um civilians while they were trapped inside a fire.