The Worcester City Council focused on public safety at its Sept. 29 meeting, taking up the city’s police staffing needs and the status of 39 fire hydrants that are currently out of service.
While discussing upcoming police retirements and the idea of having two officers per patrol car, Councilor Tony Economou asked Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier about the department’s current staffing and how many officers are needed.
Saucier said WPD currently has 478 officers. He said there are ways to recruit officers who have left other departments, though Worcester has also lost officers the same way.
“We are proactive,” the chief said. “We go out to job fairs. We put a bunch of material on our website and on Facebook, telling officers that this opportunity is there.”
Councilor Morris Bergman asked about the number of Worcester officers per capita compared with other cities.
“Worcester is lower than similarly-situated cities, like Providence, Springfield, Boston, and others,” Bergman said. “I think there’s a good case to be made, in addition to trying to maintain what we have in terms of the number of officers. We need to actually expand it for the population that continues to grow.”
Saucier said Worcester’s 478 officers put the city below many comparable cities on a per-capita basis. Springfield, with a population of approximately 150,000, has 500 officers, he said, while Hartford, Connecticut, has 413 officers for about 120,000 residents.
“My goal is to get that up to at least 538 officers,” Saucier said. “We could go to a different shift system Where we could go to 4 days on, 2 days off, 10-hour shifts.”
That system would provide 34 officers per shift, Saucier said, but about 10% would be allotted for vacations, while hospital duty and other assignments can take officers off the street. At times, he said, the city could potentially have as few as 12 officers on the street.
“We need to work to expand that,” he said. “We need to work to expand that, and my goal would be to have 55 officers per shift. That’s three shifts during that operation period, and also, we’d be able to add to traffic enforcement.”
Bergman said he hopes the city can budget for more officers and find practical, fiscally responsible ways to increase staffing.
“If we have the motivation and the desire to get this done, I’m confident that in the next few years we could get to where we need to go,” Bergman said.
Saucier said candidates for the department’s next academy class are being vetted. The class can include as many as 43 recruits, who would graduate after a 12-week academy.
The staffing report was referred to the council’s Public Safety Committee.
39 hydrants out of service
Of Worcester’s 6,084 fire hydrants, 39 are currently out of service, according to a report submitted to the council by City Manager Eric Batista.
Fire Chief Martin Dyer said the hydrant system is designed with redundancy, and firefighters responding to a fire can see which hydrants are working and which are not. Known nonfunctioning hydrants are also marked with black paint on the bonnet.
“One of the ways it communicates that the city is on top of it is that if the bonnet is painted black, that we know that fire hydrant is out of service, it’s been documented appropriately in the water department’s work order system, and it is on the fire department’s response platform, so that all of our officers are aware of that,” Dyer said. “We have backup plans ready to go.”
Councilor Satya Mitra asked how the department learns that a hydrant isn’t working.
“How do you know it’s not working? Is there a process to find out if they are working or not?” Mitra asked.
“Unfortunately,” Dyer said, “Sometimes we’re waiting until we actually try to use the hydrant to realize that it’s not in service.”
Other problems are more apparent, Dyer said, such as when a hydrant is damaged by a vehicle or snowplow or affected by a water-main break.
Repairs can take time, particularly when work requires shutting down a water main and notifying affected residents in advance.
“It takes the appropriate vendors to be scheduled. It takes the water department staff to be available. If it requires notification to the neighborhood that’s going to be affected, because heir water service will also be shut off for that period of time,” Dyer said, adding that sometimes hydrant repair waits for upcoming road work so both jobs can be completed simultaneously.
Hydrants are typically about 500 feet apart, often near intersections, and fire apparatus carry 1,000 feet or more of hose, Dyer said.
Councilor Luis Ojeda asked specifically about two out-of-service hydrants in the May Street area.
“My concern is, in that small block area, there doesn’t seem to be any fire hydrants working,” he said.
Dyer said he did not know the specifics of those hydrants but believed the city was attempting to coordinate the repairs because the work would disrupt the water main on May Street.
He said firefighters responding to an emergency see a map showing which hydrants are operational and which are out of service. Batista said there aren’t always quick fixes for individual hydrants, but the system’s redundancy provides coverage.
“Those hydrants that are not functional in that area, do not pose a threat to the neighborhood, because there are enough hydrants within the area that can provide the network that’s needed for the department,” Batista said.
The council also referred the hydrant report to the Public Safety Committee.
