The Annapolis firefighters union is pressing city leaders to address staffing shortages and add a medical unit as contract negotiations continue and the next budget cycle approaches.
Mayor Jared Littmann acknowledged the concerns Monday night during the Annapolis City Council meeting, saying that public safety is a “shared goal” of the administration.
“These negotiations are not public facing conversations, but I assure you that these issues are being discussed,” Littmann said. “My hope is that they will be addressed to a mutual satisfaction.”
Fire department staff and all other city staff, the mayor said, have been invited to participate in ongoing round table discussions to share concerns and propose solutions. The round table discussions were a part of Littmann’s 100-day plan released during his 2025 election campaign.
The mayor must submit his proposed fiscal year 2027 budget by April 13, according to legislation passed in December. The fire department has the second-largest current budget of any city department, with $27 million per fiscal year. The police department has a $31 million budget.
“There’s not enough money for everyone to get everything they want, and we’re certainly doing our best to provide the resources for what they need,” Littmann said in an interview following the meeting.
The union, Annapolis Professional Firefighters IAFF Local 1926, has used their social media posts to warn that staffing levels routinely fall short, forcing firefighters to pull crews from fire engines to staff ambulances — a practice known as cross-staffing.
About 160 times in 2024, firefighters were reassigned from fire apparatus to medical units, temporarily taking an engine out of service, according to a joint statement from the city and the fire department. The statement described cross-staffing as part of “normal operations” currently.
Union leaders say it is unsafe. They are calling for an additional peak-time medical unit, which would require hiring six more employees.
Joe Pilat, the union president, said in a November interview that the current staffing situation is a disaster waiting to happen.
“It just hasn’t happened that there’s a fire right down the street, and that ladder truck is sitting there with no staffing because it had to run a medical call, because of the staffing that they won’t provide,” Pilat said. “It’ll change when somebody dies from that. Then they’ll want to staff it and think it’s a priority. But until that happens, it’s just, ‘We’ll see what happens.’”
‘We are still waiting’
In addition to hiring more staff, the union wants to see a written plan to fix emergency medical service, and more medical units.
“We are still waiting for the City of Annapolis to reach out to our Local with a plan to address this crisis. Silence is not leadership, and relying on neighboring jurisdictions to cover our residents is not a solution—it’s a risk,” the union posted via FaceBook on Jan. 7.
While national standards dictate that there should be four firefighters per fire engine, Pilat and a report by the International Association of Fire Fighters on Annapolis said the department typically has three per vehicle.
Annapolis Fire Chief Douglas Remaley requested 10 additional staff members during last year’s budget deliberations, a department spokesperson confirmed in December, but the request was not funded.
An automatic agreement
The city relies on automatic aid agreements with Anne Arundel County and the U.S. Naval Academy fire departments to ensure the closest unit responds, regardless of jurisdiction. On Jan. 7, the union reported all city ambulances were unavailable, requiring the county to send four units into Annapolis.
Pilat said in November the city should never be fully reliant on outside agencies.
Anne Arundel County’s fire department is also grappling with staffing shortages. A recent Emergency Services Consulting International report called on Anne Arundel to stop cross-staffing vehicles and add personnel.
Have a news tip? Contact Katharine Wilson at kwilson@baltsun.com.