The Sedona Fire District is now hiring. While the district did not specify how many positions will be open, there are currently two staff who will be retiring or resigning with another two or three potentially following them, so this round of hiring will not increase the size of the staff, SFD Chief Ed Mezulis explained. 

“We’ve got people coming up on 25 and 30 years with the organization and they are moving on to retirement,” Mezulis said. “It’s not official until it goes before the local Public Safety Retirement Board, because they can change their minds. But annually, typically, we establish a new hire list [so] that we have people available to hire, if the need arises.” 

Mezulis said that while SFD usually has little difficulty hiring, one exception has been filling a vacancy for a public safety radio technician. The lack of a radio technician hasn’t affected SFD’s response times or service but has delayed needed equipment upgrades.

 “If you’ve have two or three people’s worth of work to do and you only have one, then we either delay upgrades to critical radio infrastructure or we have to contract with outside agencies,” Mezulis said. 

The different parts of the district’s radio towers range from five to 15 years in age and have an extensive list of components in need of repair, Mezulis said. 

“Our system is aged,” Mezulis said. “We’ve got multiple tower sites: Mingus Mountain, Porcupine Mountain, Schnebly Hill, the airport. It’s all computer-based equipment, and computer-based equipment has a shelf life, and we’re reaching end of life on a lot of our equipment, so we need to do a lot of upgrades.” 

SFD did offer the radio technician job to an applicant who subsequently turned the offer down, citing an inability to find housing. The city of Cottonwood is currently trying to fill a similar position and is running into the same issue. 

“We’ve got a family atmosphere,” Mezulis said. “Our call volume is of a diverse complexity from backcountry rescues to medical calls and we work in a beautiful environment for a great group of people.”