Santa Fe County plans to hire 24 full-time firefighters
Most positions will be funded by new revenue from latest tax increase
Santa Fe County plans to hire two dozen new firefighters, most with new revenue expected from the oneeighth-cent gross receipts tax increase approved earlier this summer by county commissioners.
Michael Judge, treasurer and spokesman for the local chapter of the International Association of Firefighters, said the 24 new full-time hires would mark the largest crop of recruits the county has introduced all at once and would provide “a huge boost in safety for county residents” by enhancing the current force of roughly 70 full-time firefighters.
Judge said the county plans to drop a requirement that applicants already possess emergency medical and paramedic qualifications. Instead, he said, the county would provide such training for recruits who lack it during the cadet academy.
“That opens it up to a lot of people who wouldn’t have had the opportunity before,” Judge said.
County spokeswoman Kristine Mihelcic said 18 of the new roles would be funded with revenue from the gross receipts tax hike; the other six, she said, were existing vacancies the county will now aim to fill.
County commissioners approved the one-eighth-cent increase to the county’s gross receipts tax rate in late June; the rate in unincorporated parts of the county will rise to 7.125 percent when it is enacted Jan. 1.
The increase, expected to generate some $4.6 million annually, came with the promise of new public positions in the areas of fire protection, the sheriff ’s office and the emergency dispatch center; a chunk of the money also will be put toward a new county behavioral health center, officials have said.
Another gross receipts tax increase will be put before county voters Sept. 19 in a special election. Voters will decide whether to add another one-sixteenth of a cent to the rate; if approved, that increment would also be enacted Jan. 1, at which point the gross receipt tax rate in the city of Santa Fe would rise to 8.5 percent, among the highest in the state.
The expected $2.2 million revenue from that increase, if approved, also would be put toward public safety positions and community services, the county has said.
Absentee in-person voting for the special election began Tuesday at the County Clerk’s Office at 102 Grant Ave. Early voting begins Sept. 2.
Mihelcic said the county would make a formal announcement about the new firefighter roles “in the next few weeks” and that the recruits could be training by December.