PEORIA, Ill. – There was controversy surrounding it, but the Peoria City Council is okaying the restoration of a fire department engine company cut during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Council members voted 6-4 Tuesday night to restore the company effective Monday, November 1, thanks to what some say was a last-minute save by District 2 Council Member Chuck Grayeb, given how he says the fire department is better with the engine company than without.
“It should be concerning to the policy makers in this room because we have just seen, because of all these reductions in firefighter positions, a very large increase in the possibility of civilian casualties, and casualties to the men and women of our Peoria Fire Department,” said Grayeb.
Peoria Fire Chief Jim Bachman says the numbers don’t lie, given how cuts have been made to the department since 2017.
“Our data shows that from the beginning, January 1 of 2021, and I believe the report ended either the end of August or end of September, but to that point, eight months into the year, we were keeping fires to the room of origin 54-and-a-half percent of the time,” said Bachman.
Pre-2017, Bachman says, the number was at 71%, and declined to 65% in 2019.
At-Large Council Member Sid Ruckriegel didn’t like how the proposal was put forth last minute.
“To have one data poiint pulled out that is not formally put together, and try to use that to ramrod something through by part of the council which has been evidently talking about this without the other part of the council, and then trying to find a legal loophole to be able to get this past for November first is wrong,” said Ruckriegel.
City Manager Patrick Urich said there may be room in the fire department’s budget to make the spending for the last two months of the year work, before the next biennial budget would take effect.
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