CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Staffing issues need to be addressed for the Albemarle County Police Department and Fire Rescue to elevate its service, but there are other short-term solutions that can aid in that goal, as well.

Those were the takeaways from an $82,777 third-party study of the two departments the county had done by Emergency Services Consulting International. 

ECSI’s Robert Graff presented the findings of the 202-page report to the Board of Supervisors during an open meeting at Lane Auditorium in the Albemarle County Office Building on Wednesday.

“You’re understaffed and overburdened,” supervisor Ned Gallaway told ACFR chief Dan Eggleston and ACPD Sean Reeves, but said the report was encouraging because the departments’ issues were “fixable.”

Among the recommendations in the report was designating police patrol zones to more accurately reflect what type of environment officers are working in. In the county’s mid-year crime statistics report, it revealed that it was hitting its goals responding to calls for service in urban areas but missing its benchmarks in rural parts of the county.

“I thought that was a very insightful approach,” Reeves told Cville Right Now after the presentation. “That’s the first time in my 25 year career here with the Albemarle County Police Department that we’re taking a step back and not just looking at urban or rural but looking at urban, suburban, rural and remote and whether or not the response times you see in our annual and semiannual reports are realistic, or if we need to reassess our response times.”

The report also recommended increasing civilian hires in the department to take over duties that don’t need to be handled by sworn officers. Reeves said that will allow officers to focus on patrol work.

Reeves clarified that another recommendation – to adjust the use of specialty units in patrol – didn’t mean ending those units, things like crash investigation and K-9 units. It meant assigning them to patrols and shifts where their special skills might more frequently come into play.

“There’s nothing in the report that was surprising at all,” Reeves said. “It just validated what our officers on the frontlines here on the street know. That as calls for service keep growing and call dynamics become more complicated, we need more resources out on the street to help respond.”

Eggleston felt the same way about the findings related to Fire Rescue.

“I don’t think there were any surprises in the study. I think a lot of that we knew, but it’s nice to have a checkup,” Eggleston told Cville Right Now. “It’s a big report. It lays out a lot of challenges we have. Our job is going to be to be able to prioritize those over time and really figure out what are the steps to get us stabilized in certain areas so that we can catch our breath and then look at long-term strategic items.”

One recommendation that seemed to garner support from the board was the idea of having a second recruit school to train incoming firemen.

“It would be a matter of making sure we’re staffing up our training division to the point where we have enough instructors that we could do that,” Eggleston said. “It’s pretty labor intensive to have a recruit school. There’s some classroom material, but there’s a lot of hands-on, out in the field and in our burn building, our training center.”

Kristy Shifflett, the county’s chief operating officer, introduced the presentation to the board, telling the supervisors the goal was to achieve “predictable service and accountability.” 

Shifflett also noted that the report recommended tiers of action for the two departments, and that under each tier were short-term, mid-term and long-term steps.

Shifflett said full implementation of the report’s suggestions could take between five and seven years. 

ESCI’s Graff then walked the board through the specifics of the company’s findings. He said ESCI had two teams working with the county, one focused on the police department and a second looking at fire rescue. 

Graff noted that both departments face issues with staffing as an underlying problem, but noted the study found other solutions that could mitigate some of the challenges the departments are facing. 

From there, supervisors had the opportunity to comment on the report and question Graff, Shifflett, Reeves and Eggleston, though the most common refrain from the board was that it needed more time – and likely another work session – to fully comprehend the exhaustive findings. 

Supervisor Mike Pruitt noted the recommendation to redefine police service areas from simply urban and rural to urban, suburban, rural and remote, with different metrics for success attached to each designation. 

Supervisor Diantha McKeel asked Eggleston to clarify the term dynamic staffing, listed throughout the report as an issue the fire department was grappling with. 

Eggleston explained that the term refers to moving personnel to fully staff one firehouse at the expense of staffing at another.

“It’s really making a choice,” Eggleston said, noting that some in his industry refer to the practice as “brown outs.”

Pruitt and supervisor Ann Mallek took exception to what they viewed as a negative portrayal of volunteer firefighters in the report.

After the presentation, Eggleston clarified to Cville Right Now what that referred to.

“A lot of that tension’s more at the policy level,” Eggleston said. “Down at the station level, they get along really well.” 

Gallaway praised the two departments for being willing participants in the studies, noting “not all departments in the county have to go through this.”

Gallaway was perhaps the most outspoken about the board needing more time to review the report before it could really ask questions, saying he wanted “a more robust” review and discussion, because acting on the report’s recommendations would translate to budget items down the line. 

Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley agreed, advocating for another work session or two-on-two meetings to allow board members to dig deeper into the findings.

“We as a board need to know more,” she said.

Supervisor Jim Andrews said he was interested in hearing more directly from Reeves and Eggleston after everyone had the chance to review the study more fully. 

Ultimately, to improve response times and service, both departments will need more people. But Wednesday, both Eggleston and Reeves were reluctant to put a number on what that kind of staffing would look like.

“I could give you an answer today and then next year, it’s going to change,” Reeves said. “We have to look at our trajectory, where we’re going as a county. It’s going to be a moving target.”