New fire chief takes over in Canton Township
Canton Township’s new fire chief officially stepped into the role this week.
The municipality’s board of supervisors hired Dominic Sicchitano in a unanimous vote at a special meeting Jan. 23.
Township Manager Stephanie Pettit said Sicchitano received a two-year contract. The Observer-Reporter submitted a right-to-know request to obtain the details of Sicchitano’s contract, including his salary. According to the contract, Canton Township will pay Sicchitano $80,000 per year.
Pettit said a paid fire chief is a first for the township, and more township employees could be on the way.
“They will be looking into hiring part-time firefighters once he is on the job,” Pettit said.
The move toward a paid fire staff comes as a result of a “lack of volunteerism,” according to Pettit.
“That is something that is across the board in this whole state. We have volunteers for the evening. We have no one during the day,” Pettit said.
Speaking in his new office at the Jefferson Avenue fire station, Sicchitano acknowledged that his hiring is not an immediate fix to that problem.
“Not at all,” Sicchitano said. “A chief gets in, they need to kind of administratively collect what’s going on.”
He added that the fire department is at the beginning of a process of creating a combination fire department in which paid staff and volunteers work side by side.
“Hiring the fire chief is kind of the first step,” Sicchitano said.
Sicchitano has spent 22 years of his life as firefighter, beginning at age 14 as a junior firefighter at Bentleyville Fire-Rescue.
“It’s been in my family for years. My grandfather was the fire chief of Bentleyville. My father was the assistant fire chief of Bentleyville. So it’s been in my life ever since I was baby. I grew up in the fire department,” Sicchitano said.
He has worked for the North Strabane Fire Department since 2014, and has been a captain there since 2019. Sicchitano remains the assistant fire chief at Bentleyville Fire-Rescue.
Sicchitano also lives in Bentleyville. His contract stipulates that he live within 20 “air miles” of Canton Township. He does not believe his current distance from Canton will be an issue.
“I’m 15 minutes away to respond to anything major … I’m a salary position. I’m here here Monday through Friday for my scheduled shifts, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be here for major emergencies, storm-related events, all that stuff,” Sicchitano said. “Especially the first few months here, I’m sure that I’ll be living out of this office trying to get things straight.”
Currently there are 17 members of the fire department. Chuck LaBella remains the volunteer chief, but Sicchitano says he will oversee the whole organization when it comes to operations and response to incidents.
Sicchitano called the current volunteer system in Pennsylvania “broken.”
“The combination department is that happy medium. It is not a full career department. It is not a full volunteer department. It’s that middle row,” Sicchitano said.
As he starts in the role, Sicchitano said he will be looking at where the department falls short in volunteers when responding to incidents. Though there is no timeline for when it would happen, the next step would be for the township to hire part-time firefighters to fill in those gaps to build a combination department.
“What drew me here, it’s pretty much the next step in my career, and to build something that I went through at North Strabane. Because when I started at North Strabane, we weren’t 24/7. I was a part of that process throughout,” Sicchitano said. “I think I can do a lot of good in continuing that same model in Canton Township.”