Voters in Bozeman did not support a bond to build a fourth fire station on Bozeman’s growing west side of town nor a mill levy to hire additional police and fire staff.
City of Bozeman Fire Chief Josh Waldo said conversations about the next steps are ongoing.
“The need doesn’t go away," Waldo said. "The community is going to continue to grow. We still need a fourth fire station, that need didn’t disappear overnight.”
The city of Bozeman does have some temporary assistance from a recently awarded FEMA grant to fund 12 new positions for three years.
Waldo says those positions will go towards standing up a quick response unit that will respond to lower priority calls across the city.
“Most like a pick up truck or SUV type vehicle that can answer medical calls, false alarms, service calls. Having a smaller unit that can cover some of those calls will be extremely helpful, to help keep those fires trucks available for the higher priority calls,” Waldo said.
Bozeman’s standard response time is currently four minutes over the national standard of six minutes.
“We’re still working in 2024 with the same three fire stations, three available fire trucks that we had in 2007,” Waldo said.
To address the city’s growth without additional personnel, the fire department made the decision in 2022 not to send a truck to every 911 call. Waldo says after that, there’s not much more to be cut.
“We could have situations where people are going to have to wait for a firetruck to get off of one call to go on the next call.”
While that hasn’t happened yet because of the support from nearby fire departments, Waldo worries that departments in Belgrade, Hyalite and Central Valley are facing their own growing pains and may be less able to assist in the future.
Waldo says longer wait times not only affect the people waiting, but also fire department staff.
“They take a tremendous amount of pride in customer service and taking care of our community. So when we’re not doing that at the standard we know we should be, it’s going to hurt," Waldo said.
