The city of Boise has a long-term goal to staff its fire stations with four-person engine crews. The National Fire Protection Association recommends four-person staffing should be standard, for safety and fast response.
Three of 19 stations in Boise are already staffed at this level, but the rest will have to keep waiting. During a budget workshop this week, Boise City Council President Colin Nash couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“Council has worked hard this year to try to find money for four-person staffing for fire departments; we’ve looked and looked and looked,” he said, and after a heavy pause, continued, “I am not finding the money this year.”
The Boise City Council, along with city staff, is currently working through the fiscal year 2026 budget proposal. It includes a modest budget increase for Boise Fire, up to about $84 million according to budget documents.
Four-person fire teams can speed up fire response, with a two-person pair immediately able to enter a burning building instead of having to wait for backup. More hands means work at the scene of an emergency can get done more efficiently, Boise Fire Chief Mark Niemeyer told Boise State Public Radio. And firefighters are less likely to get worn down as quickly in extreme temperatures, or while doing CPR.
The City of Meridian started adding four-person fire engine teams more than a year ago using a federal SAFER program grant. Now, that city’s mayor, Robert Simison, has proposed a $5 million annual property tax levy to help pay for public safety costs, including keeping the 13 new firefighters after the grant funding used to hire them is exhausted.
In Boise, Niemeyer said initial costs for hiring and training are more than $560,000 per station, and on-going costs are more than $1 million a year.
He’s prioritized the next six stations that should implement four-person engine staffing based on response time and other data. “After those six stations get done, we'll reanalyze to see if we need to keep adding or if we are meeting our response goal,” he said in a telephone interview.
Nash said leadership and staff were crunching the numbers until just before an internal deadline this week.
“There are going to be further opportunities to explore this,” he said in the budget workshop, “perhaps in the form of an interim budget change.”
The next round of federal SAFER grants could be an option for Boise - but there’s no guarantee that program will continue in its current form under the Trump administration.
Niemeyer, who is retiring in October, is disappointed they can’t bring four-person teams to more fire stations now, but said he understands the budget struggles. When he came to Boise five years ago, Niemeyer said the growth plan he developed included expanding one station a year to four-person teams. That goal got harder with the passage of 2021’s house bill 389, which placed limits on property taxes and city budget growth.
“That wasn't a small hit to local government budgets,” Niemeyer said, adding inflation has also made the process more difficult.
But the issue isn’t going anywhere. Nash said the city will continue to look for any and all funding opportunities, because even with a big goal, “the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”
