Norwich — After hearing pleas from volunteer fire chiefs and firefighters urging delay of a plan to seek bids from consultants for an in-depth analysis of the city’s fire services, the City Council Public Safety Committee recommended the full council go ahead with the advertisement, while delaying completion of the study.

Volunteer fire chiefs and firefighters argued they should be focusing full attention on protecting themselves and the public while handling emergency calls during the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than gathering data for the analysis. Some argued the city already has the data requested and that the city should not be spending taxpayer money on a study during a health emergency.

Opponents also argued that the council should wait until the public could have full say at an in-person meeting with the council committee, rather than through clumsy online or teleconference connections. The committee’s first remote meeting was delayed for about 20 minutes with connection difficulties, with some people wanting to comment forced to call aldermen’s cellphones for the meeting code, complaining they could not connect.

“I think we can spend more time helping our citizens, our residents, get through the pandemic,” Laurel Hill Volunteer Fire Chief Aaron Westervelt told the committee. He added he is “more than willing” to provide the information, but the study should be held off until the pandemic emergency is over.

East Great Plain volunteer Chief Keith Milton said the departments are against the study now because of the timing and the cost. “Now is not the time, with everything going on,” he said.

Committee Chairman Alderman Joseph DeLucia and member Council President Pro Tempore Mark Bettencourt voted in favor of recommending the study be forwarded to the full City Council. Alderman William Nash, frustrated that his audio connection to the meeting was faulty, voted against the recommendation. Reached after the meeting, Nash said he is not against the study, but would have recommended delaying action until July.

Norwich has one paid fire department covering the central city and Greeneville urban areas and five volunteer departments for surrounding areas. The recommendation calls for City Manager John Salomone to seek requests for proposals from outside consultants to study six aspects of the city’s fire service: response and the dispatch assignment order of fire departments called to incidents, data on standardized response time, communications and dispatch staffing, fire apparatuses, equipment purchases and inventory and staffing at all levels.

The resolution calls for the study to be completed by Nov. 30, a delay from the original target of having the work completed within 90 days.

Bettencourt and DeLucia said there’s no reason to delay the first part of the action, seeking the request for proposals, which would not require any work from the departments at this time and would merely provide city officials with the cost of conducting such a study.

Bettencourt said he would have preferred doing the study in-house, which was proposed a year ago. But all three members of the council committee expressed frustration that no progress was made on the request to have the six fire chiefs work with Salomone on a way to reduce the city’s fire apparatuses over time and rework responses to incidents to absorb the reduction.

“I just don’t see a good reason why government has to come to a grinding halt because we’re in the middle of a pandemic,” Bettencourt said.

Nash said he was glad to hear the chiefs say they have the information but he, too, saw little progress in completing a study in-house. Nash had urged the council a year ago to forego seeking outside bids for the study and giving the task to the local chiefs.

“We’re not putting anymore workload on the first responders,” DeLucia said. “It puts more workload on the city manager.”

c.bessette@theday.com