The Folsom City Council voted Tuesday night to save firefighter jobs as the city faces a $3 million budget deficit.

The council had been discussing whether to close down a station and cut 10 firefighter vacancies that were set to be filled at the end of the month.

City Manager Bryan Whitemyer said that a solution to the budget hole could have been passing Measure G, which would've added one cent to the sales tax and brought in about $29 million annually. However, it didn't pass, so Whitemyer said that the city has to consider making cuts to get back in the green.

"This is a concern. It's one of those things that we have to face when we have a deficit. There's no easy decision when we're looking at this," Whitemyer said.

Whitemyer said that it wasn't just fire that was at risk. Freezing all general fund positions, including police, is on the table.

"Even if we lower the number of firefighters that we have, if we keep every fire station open, we will incur significant overtime costs," Whitemyer said.

Public comments and Whitemyer echoed what we heard from firefighters: there would be public impacts with these job cuts.

"It's just going to be an increase in time waiting for an ambulance to get you to transport to the hospital," city firefighter Dan Carson said.

It's unclear just how much response times would have been increased, but already, the department said that firefighters are working at max capacity.

"If we were to make these cuts, we'd be down to two ambulances in town," Carson said. "What we're seeing is about six, five hours a day where the city of Folsom has no ambulances in town at all."

The next council meeting is in August. There, city leaders will take up other departments and other suggestions to fix that budget deficit.

"Cuts to public safety put everyone at risk," city firefighter Tyler Smith said. "We're talking about people's lives."  

• Folsom News