Residents urge Grafton council to restore daytime fire staffing, cite faster response times

Two residents urged the Village of Grafton council on April 21 to reverse a decision to remove daytime staffing from the fire and EMS department, saying the change risks longer emergency response times and greater out-of-pocket costs for residents.

Cassie Crix, who identified herself as a longtime resident and the spouse of a retired assistant fire chief, told the council that response times improved substantially after the village added daytime staffing in 2024. She said response times that had been “12 to 14 minutes” under an earlier volunteer-only model fell to about “three and a half minutes” with staffed coverage, and she described that improvement as critical to saving lives. Crix said staffed coverage also allowed the village to stop relying on an outside ambulance service, keeping funding and operational control local. She said call volume has been increasing and that a volunteer-only system cannot reliably guarantee consistent response during daytime hours when volunteers may be at full-time jobs.

Crix also raised pay and staffing-process concerns, telling the council that wages for the fire chief and first responders are lower than those in neighboring communities and make recruitment and retention difficult. She said the apparent cause of the staffing rollback was a technical issue in how the budget was documented and characterized that documentation issue as the council’s responsibility to fix rather than a fault of fire personnel.

Resident Jennifer Filipiak, who has lived in Grafton since 2000, echoed those concerns and cited a 2022 Ohio task force mentioned in public comment that found fully volunteer fire departments tend to have longer response times. Filipiak said the village saw response times improve to roughly 3.5 minutes with staffing and asked why positions were removed if funding had been included in the 2026 budget. She asked the council for a clear plan and timeline to maintain reliable daytime coverage and for information on how residents would be protected medically and financially if neighboring departments respond and bill for services.

The mayor and council did not announce a change in direction during public comment. No formal motion or vote on fire staffing was recorded in the meeting minutes for April 21; council action that night focused on two administrative items (an ordinance to add a part-time contract employee for the treasurer and a resolution authorizing a change order for a trailhead project) that were approved unanimously.

Why this matters: Shortfalls in daytime staffing can lengthen emergency response times, especially in communities that rely on volunteer responders during working hours. Residents called for the council to clarify the budgetary and ordinance issues the speakers said led to the staffing change and to present a timeline for restoring or replacing daytime coverage.

Next steps: The transcript records public comment raising the issue; the council did not take a formal vote or direct staff to restore daytime staffing during the April 21 meeting. Additional council meetings or administrative action would be required to change staffing or budgeting.