Tripp, a Tampa native, is the first female fire chief in Tampa history. Her predecessor, Fire Chief Nick LoCicero, retired in May 2021 after a six-month investigation cleared him of wrongdoing; he was suspended over unspecified allegations of misconduct in November 2020. Tripp was appointed fire chief by Mayor Jane Castor in June 2021.
“I can say that this administration has done everything to be resilient,” Tripp said at the meeting. “To come into the future.”
In 2021, Tripp hired the consulting firm, Fitch and Associates, to conduct a feasibility study of TFR. She told council she had worked with Fitch before, during her time as Rescue Division Chief for Hillsborough Fire Rescue.
Tampa’s Firefighters Union, Local Chapter 754, says Tripp hired a company known for union busting. On Feb. 21, 2019, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) executive board declared Fitch & Associates a rival organization at the request of Orlando’s local 1365.
“These last three years, they haven’t done anything except find these companies that are looking to save a buck and break unions,” Tampa’s Local 754 President Nick Stocco told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
Tripp told CL she didn’t know about the rival organization designation until the Fitch report was already underway.
“I did not know that they were, but once I started the report, I heard someone grumble about it,” Tripp said. “When I investigated it, there was a recommendation that some departments could go single-cert.”
Tripp was talking about when Fitch evaluated Orlando Fire in 2018. That report recommended “single cert” units to address what Fitch called a lack of medical care. Single-cert means only paramedics would be available as opposed to firefighters who are trained as paramedics.
“It’s not so much Fitch telling them you don’t need firefighters. You just need paramedics,” Tripp said. “It’s more like you told me to look at your information, and this is what you need.”
Tripp said single-cert units were never a recommendation in Tampa’s Fitch report.
“That’s not true,” Stocco told CL. “There was an attempt during our contract negotiations to create two different shifts, only for paramedics.”
Stocco said the union didn’t agree to that proposal.
Last month, Stocco and City Council member Bill Carlson raised concerns about the $99,995 Tripp paid to Fitch for the report. That amount falls just under the city’s $100,000 requirement for approval from the City Council.
“I don’t want to see another $99,995 contract again. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it looks like it’s circumventing the public and us, the city council,” Carlson said at the meeting.
Tripp told CL, “It was more like we need to get this done, and I paid you what you asked for.”
The Fitch report was presented to council by Fitch partner Steven Knight, a retired assistant fire chief from St. Petersburg, who argued in favor of “public/private partnerships,” hiring companies like Sunstar instead of adding more sworn firefighters or building more fire stations.
“The most expensive way to improve that time is purchasing additional stations and staff personnel,” Knight said at the meeting.
Stocco says that 68% of the city’s fire stations are past life expectancy. Fifteen stations are at least 30 years old, and some are as old as 90 and 100 years old. He also pointed to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1710 standard regarding response times. The NFPA recommends response times of six minutes. Tampa’s is 13.1 minutes, according to last month’s presentation.
“That means 90% of the time, an ambulance is at your door in 13 minutes from you calling 911,” Stocco said. “It’s quicker to get an Uber.”
Last month, Council unanimously requested a different consultant or mediator to work with Local 754 on an updated report. Council asked staff to prepare a report on possible public safety revenue resources. Also, TFR will host a workshop on the public safety plan on Aug. 31.
The report comes weeks after Tampa’s Firehouse 13 came under scrutiny for an incident where a toy monkey was found hanging from the ceiling. The firefighter who filed a human resources complaint about the monkey told WFTS that he also found a picture of himself with racist language scrawled across his forehead.
Last week, TFR’s Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) had a server hardware failure, going offline from Sunday evening through Wednesday. That means calls were dispatched manually. Stocco told CL that the CAD failure was partly due to the delay in TFR’s master plan.
“There was a gap in service,” Stocco told CL. “Everything had to go to paper and pen. We did see upwards of 30 minutes waiting for an ambulance at some scenes Tuesday night.”
He said the current CAD system was installed in 1998 and was supposed to be replaced in 2021.
“I know we had to do a lot of things manually,” Tripp told the Council last week, in her report on the outage. “But as far as responding to the community and providing service, there was no gap in service.”
Tripp told the Council that TFR is contracting a vendor to replace the CAD system and is expected to have an update by next month.
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UPDATED 07/25/23 11:16 a.m. Updated to make clear that Tripp previously served as Rescue Division Chief, and change “single-serve” to “single-cert.”
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2023.