Roseville Fire Department seeks major staffing increase
The demand for emergency response is exceeding the RFD's capacity
The Roseville Fire Department brought a proposal to city council on Jan. 27, 2025 to add 15 additional fire department personnel to meet an unsustainable increase in emergency calls.
Currently the fire department employs 24 full time firefighters, not including the chief and assistant chief.
In the presentation, Fire Chief Brosnahan and Assistant Chief Neil Sjostrom laid out the rationale for the increase, presenting data about call volume, response times, and comparison with other comparable suburban cities.
The number of calls the fire department receives has increased over 50% since 2018, a volume increase of 2,001 total emergency incidents. In 2024 alone, the fire department experienced a 9.2% increase over 2023.
This comes out to approximately 20 calls a day that the crews are handling, Brosnahan said. So far in 2025, the number of calls are continuing to increase at a similar pace to the year before.
“This growth in call numbers is no longer sustainable,” Brosnahan said to the city council.
In 2024 the fire department experienced 235 instances in which they did not have an appropriate or available unit for the emergency, according to the request for council action (RCA).
Emergency calls are stacking up and occurring simultaneously. In 2024, 60% of the total call volume was overlapping calls, which comes out to an average of 5.7 times per day that the fire department needed to navigate multiple calls at once.
Practically, this can look like receiving a new call while crews are already responding to another one—sometimes up to 3 or even 4 additional calls all at the same time. This has an impact on the fire department’s response time and the quality of the time they’re able to spend per call. It also has a negative impact on the crews’ mental and physical health, Brosnahan said.
Why is this happening?
Roseville has a complex matrix of needs and risks, including a high percentage (nearly 25%) of seniors over the age of 65 and senior care facilities. The presentation also referenced Roseville’s “high hazard sites,” increased daytime population, proximity to Saint Paul and Minneapolis, and a growing multi-family and population density. Currently Roseville is falling behind peer cities of similar size and services for calls-per on-duty firefighter and emergency calls per on-duty staffed response unit.
Below is a graph from the presentation showing a comparison of other metro cities. The blue bars show each city’s number of staffed response units and the orange line is the call volume. Roseville’s current staffing model is the bar on the far left and the proposed model is on the far right.
The Roseville Fire Department is not only a fire response crew. Most of their response calls are for rescue & emergency medical services. Fire incidents make up just 1.73% of calls, as shown in the chart below. RFD’s crews include EMTs or paramedics and are first responders before ambulance services arrive.
Currently, the RFD has enough full time staff for four apparatuses to respond to calls, as shown in the image below from the presentation:
The new proposal would allow for the ladder truck to be fully staffed too, as shown in the image below from the presentation:
The staffing increase would allow for a balance of paramedics and EMTs with a goal of at least one paramedic per staffed apparatus. The proposal also includes the addition of a Captain position in a supervisory role, to help mentor and coordinate the crews in the midst of complex or overlapping incidents.
“This enhancement will allow for better overall preparedness and readiness to support our community for emergency response, public education, and community outreach. Overall this staffing enhancement would better meet the emergency demand of the community as well as improve our retention of critical staff,” the RCA reads.
Next steps
The proposed staffing increase would increase the tax levy and overall city budget by approximately two million dollars, according to the presentation.
The Roseville Fire Department plans to apply for a FEMA Staffing For Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant from the federal government to help defray some of the costs. Previously, the department was awarded a SAFER grant which covered a significant portion of the cost of six firefighters for three years, ending on January 30, 2024. The SAFER grant application process is expected to open soon, but is highly competitive with only 5% of applicants awarded funding.
The city council indicated support of this staffing increase and directed the fire department to pursue the grant funding when it becomes available. City council will keep this proposal in mind when discussing next year’s city budget. The council will need to decide how quickly to hire and onboard the new staff, with various options ranging from a full hire and implementation in 2026 to a more spread out implementation through 2027.
“When you talk to residents, you door knock, the things they want are the services we are talking about. They expect their taxes to go to these things like fire services and a safe community,” Councilmember Wayne Groff said during the meeting.
The fire department intends to make it a priority to engage with the community and civic groups to answer questions and inform the public about the fire department’s staffing needs. There was an opportunity for public comment during the meeting, but no one came forward.
For more detail, watch the fire department’s presentation to city council from Jan. 27 on YouTube:
To download and view the presentation slides from the meeting, click here.