It’s long past time to cut through the rhetoric from all sides over the hiring of eight additional Jamestown firefighters to be paid for with a three-year SAFER grant from the federal government.

Lurking behind the scenes — as was reported in Friday’s edition of The Post-Journal — is the possible financial hit that comes if the city doesn’t receive another SAFER grant. That risk is downplayed by Mayor Eddie Sundquist, but it’s a very real risk taxpayers must consider as they weigh whether or not the city should accept the $1.8 million from the federal government to hire the eight additional firefighters.

How do free firefighters end up costing the city in the long run, you may ask.

The answer is simple.

First is the fact that the SAFER grant stipulates that the Jamestown Fire Department has to keep its current manpower, which includes the four firefighters the city is hiring with ARPA funding. The ARPA funding runs out one year before the SAFER grant does — meaning the city is really committing to more than $200,000 in salaries as well as benefits on the four ARPA firefighting positions for 2027. The SAFER grant only pays for manpower, not equipping that manpower, which means the city has to pay $303,477 out of pocket for turnout gear and benefits. And, as former City Comptroller Joe Bellitto told the council this week, if the SAFER grant ends in the future it will cost the city $2,428,453 to keep the eight firefighters on duty.

But another hit comes in the form of possible impact arbitration payments. If the city doesn’t receive another SAFER grant, it has been said the city can simply choose not to hire new firefighters and go back to its 2022 staffing levels. Things really aren’t that simple.

The last time the city cut firefighters, the city found itself in court facing what is known as an impact arbitration case. The gist of the argument is firefighters working at a certain shift level have to do more work when the department’s size shrinks. The remaining firefighters then file suit seeking an additional payment from the city depending on how many firefighters are working at any given time if the city has fewer than 55 firefighters. Those payments cost the city roughly $90,000 each year.

It’s true those payments go away for three years if the city accepts the SAFER grant and are likely to decrease with the additional ARPA firefighters, but there’s no telling if the minimum staffing that triggers the impact arbitration will change if the case is reopened in the future. There is also no way to tell if an arbitrator will impose a higher payment to each firefighter if the case is reopened.

That’s a pretty big unknown looming over these discussions.

Absent a pledge from the union that it won’t seek impact arbitration when the SAFER grant gravy train comes to an end, the council can’t in good conscience sign on to accept the grant money now because it doesn’t know what future impact arbitration will bring. The only thing we know with relative certainty is Jamestown –and its taxpayers — will lose at the impact arbitration table. The question is how much.