North Pole police and fire chiefs propose 2027 budgets about $640,000 higher

North Pole's police and fire chiefs on Wednesday asked the City Council for 2027 budgets that together are about $640,000 larger than this year's, mostly because of wages.

Police Chief Heath Smith proposed a budget $508,031 above this year's. Fire Chief Chad Heineken proposed $4,037,051, up $132,451. The council took no vote at the work session.

Both budgets include the 3 percent raise and new pay scale the council approved earlier this month. Both chiefs also pointed to a higher dispatch contract, which Smith said will cost the police department about $90,000 more.

Police wages rise about $350,000, Smith said. That includes a part-time job he made full time after the department's HR clerk found the employee had been working enough hours all along for the city to owe contributions to PERS, the state retirement system.

"And so we had to go back and make that right," Smith said.

Smith also added $15,000 for fuel and $15,000 for repairs. Patrol cars sit idling for hours in the cold on calls, he said, so they wear out faster than their odometers show.

His old car had 85,000 miles on the odometer but about 227,000 miles of wear when its rack and pinion failed this year, leaving it undrivable.

Six vehicles are at or past retirement mileage, Smith said. He is asking for two new cars in 2027 and plans to ask for a third, paid from money already saved in the fleet fund. "Two cars a year keeps us where we need to be," he said.

Councilman Jordan Schuster called the police increase "a tough pill to swallow," though mostly out of the chief's control, and said residents keep asking for more patrols inside the city. Smith said officers patrol more than residents see because they try to reach every neighborhood.

Heineken's budget would keep the fire department's apprentices for 14 months instead of 12. Now they leave June 30, and the new class spends July and August in fire academy, one of the busiest stretches of the year.

That drops each shift from six people to five, the minimum needed to keep two ambulances in service with a supervisor. Keeping the old class through August would hold shifts at six, Heineken said.

The current apprentices hadn't been told. "Well, if they're watching this, they just heard the news," Heineken said.

The department is also in early planning for a live-fire training building made from shipping containers, starting with two donated by the firefighters' association.

For now, crews go to Eielson or Fairbanks for live-fire training, which takes a fire truck out of the district and puts at least four firefighters on overtime, Heineken said.

Asked about firefighting foam contamination at other area sites, Heineken said the department stopped carrying foam two years ago and would train only with water. He said foam was used on the department's training grounds many years ago.

The state lists the fire station at 110 Lewis Street as an active PFAS site.

The station itself is full. "We physically could not increase our staffing numbers today. We are at capacity," Heineken said. A new station, estimated at just under $18 million in 2023, would probably cost more than $23 million now, he said.

The fire department expects to bring the city about $1.27 million this year, including $938,503 from a Fairbanks North Star Borough contract to provide ambulance service outside the city.