Councilman Tony Bradburn said fire department officials should have taken extra precautions when they learned in mid-January that an employee had ringworm - a contagious fungus that can affect the skin.
"There is the potential with that contagious condition that you could spread that to someone," he said Monday night at a meeting of the city's Safety Committee. "If somebody's contagious, you get them out of the environment. You tell them to go home."
Two additional Fire Department employees have since been diagnosed with ringworm.
Fire Chief Rich Fletcher said the employee, who was not identified, was allowed to continue on the job only after doctors said he was "not contagious."
Fire officials are revising their infectious control policy, which protects employees against treating patients with infectious diseases.
"We really didn't focus on watching out for each other," Fletcher said.
Employees will now be required to take two additional days off after a doctor deems them not contagious.
"We went according to the documentation that we got from physicians," Fletcher said.
He said several physicians consulted said public exposure was "unlikely."
"It is our policy to wear latex gloves while on EMS runs, and all physicians agreed that transmission was highly unlikely," Fletcher wrote in a Feb. 3 memo to City Manager Scot Lahrmer.
Fletcher admitted that he wasn't notified by supervisors about the incident until six days after the employee noticed a dime-sized rash on his chest.
"That's where I see the error was," said Councilwoman Charlene Pelfrey.
