At the June 1 Columbia Heights City Council workshop, city staff recommended the Council move forward with a study on future staffing and deployment models for the city’s fire department.
“The whole reason of the study is to look to the future: What are our options and what are those financial impacts that will have on the future?” said Dan O’Brien, Columbia Heights fire chief.
Staffing
According to O’Brien, the biggest issue facing the department is recruiting and retaining enough staff: “Staffing remains probably the biggest issue.”
The paid-on-call model Columbia Heights uses faces increasing struggles with hiring. The declining numbers threaten to eventually leave the department with so few staff, it cannot carry out its core firefighting responsibilities.
“If the paid-on-call model basically fizzles out — if we can’t get staffing — suddenly the fire department is really shorthanded and we aren’t able to respond to calls,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien called the COVID-19 pandemic a turning point for the department, where fewer volunteers came forward for the role while the number of calls continued to increase.
While the timeline for when the department will reach critical staffing levels is unclear, according to O’Brien, the outcomes of such an eventuality would be dire.
(Northeaster File, Max Goldberg)
A full-time fire department
One alternative for the Columbia Heights Fire Department would be transitioning to a full-time career department. Here, too, recruiting and retaining staff is an issue.
“Because of more departments going to full-time departments, there are more options, so candidates are able to move around and compare jobs and go to where they are paid better,” O’Brien said.
For example, nearby towns like Roseville can pay higher rates to firefighters in addition to higher pay step scales. This can drive potential employes to nearby fire departments.
The shift to a full-time career department also comes with a much larger price tag.
“The biggest part of any budget is staffing,” O’Brien said.
The shift to a full-time fire department would also potentially take years as new staff are added over time. O’Brien estimates that a full-time fire department budget could rival that of the police department, an increase of more than $5 million based on budget data from 2024.
Alternative models
Other models included in the study are regional, shared or licensed fire departments that would replace Columbia Heights’ fire department.
Merging fire departments with nearby cities like Fridley or St. Anthony would nearly triple staff currently at the Columbia Heights fire department.
“There’s some benefits to that because all three cities could bring something to the board… Anything’s possible,” O’Brien said.
Finally, contracting with nonprofit, private or other municipal firefighters is another option set to be studied.
“Much like Columbia heights does with Hilltop … another city could do that for us,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien mentions the Spring Lake Park, Blaine, Mounds View (SBM) Fire Department as a contracting option. The SBM fire department is a nonprofit that serves three cities in addition to the Anoka County Airport.
Increased calls and workload
n addition to the staffing issues, the study is also seeking a new fire department model due to an increased workload.
“Over time our call volume always increases which puts additional time requirements on our paid-on calls and staff,” O’Brien said.
The number of fire and medical calls jumped in 2025 by nearly 500 calls, rising from 2,712 calls to 2,182 in 2024..
In 2020 the department reclassified several types of low acuity calls like those for slivers and the flu in order to better track call numbers. Because of this reclassification, calls dropped from more than 3,000 in 2019 to 2,150 in 2000. Despite that reclassification, the number of calls has grown substantially in the last five years, nearly returning to pre-reclassification numbers.
An increased calls volume is tied to population size which has grown over time, but also to other factors like population age and infrastructure age.
Another hurdle to the department is the workload from the city’s rental licensing and property maintenance inspection program. Since the early 1990s, the fire department has overseen the program, which inspects nearly 1,000 buildings annually and includes significant administrative work.
“All that time that’s being committed to this is time that is being taken away from things like public education, emergency management, fire investigation, all those other fire department functions that the fire department should be doing,” O’Brien said.
Previous study outcomes
The city has undertaken two previous studies on alternate models for the fire department in 2013 and 2019.
The 2013 study found that the department was “operating at a level that is currently meeting the expectations of the communities served but realize that there is always room for improvement.”
In 2019, the study identified the rental licensing and property maintenance inspection program as a burden to the department which led to the hiring of additional firefighter inspectors.
“That has helped alleviate some of the burden on the department but it is still very, very time consuming,” O’Brien said.
The 2026 study will review alternate models for the department as well as shifting the rental licensing and property maintenance inspection program to another department within the city.
For O’Brien, however, despite these challenges, the fire department will remain for the residents of Columbia Heights.
“That’s why we are doing this now. The fire department won’t necessarily (be) going anywhere anytime soon. We are just trying to be proactive and look long-term … We still are going to be here in some way, shape or form.”