The first is that the class is more than double the size of recent ones. For a department with a chronic shortage of paramedics, that's fabulous news.

The second is that, as recently as two months ago, two of the recruits wouldn't even have been eligible for hire.

Why? When they applied for the job, they hadn't lived here for a year.

I still can't get over the fact that, for decades, this city's hiring rules for civil-service positions required applicants to have lived within our borders for a year before even applying for the job.

Can you spell s-t-u-p-i-d?

In April, thankfully, City Council voted, historically, to waive that requirement for all but a handful of civil-service positions. Most new hires now have six months to move into the city once they're on our payroll.

Can you spell s-m-a-r-t?

For Dave Kearney, it has been a happy shock to see the revision embraced so quickly. He's recording secretary of the firefighters union (which represents the paramedics) and, for years, an outspoken critic of the inability of Emergency Medical Services to keep paramedic positions filled.

Yesterday, though, he was doing the happy dance.

"I've been around the system for a long time, so I can tell you that this is significant, especially in a city known for dragging its feet when it comes to change," he said. "I thought it would take another year for the department to actually use the residency waiver. This shows a commitment to change."

In fact, the change is so new, it's not yet reflected on the city's job-hiring Web site, where paramedic applicants are still advised they must live in Philly for a year before applying for the crazy job of saving our lives.

"Hey, they can always update the Web site," Kearney said. "At least they got the new hires."

One of those newbies is Jack Diaz, 44, a paramedic who contacted me in February after reading a column I'd written about how EMS could fill more paramedic positions if the city waived that hiring requirement.

Diaz was Exhibit A for that argument.

He had worked as a medic for 10 years in the Coast Guard, and then as a lab tech at Massachusetts General Hospital. Thinking he needed a change, he moved to North Wildwood with his wife and did construction work, but realized he missed patient care.

So he enrolled in the paramedic-training program at Star Technical Institute, which required him to spend six weeks with Philly's EMS workers.

"It was fast and furious," Diaz said happily of his training with Medic 18. "There were some B.S. calls, yeah, but the sheer volume of calls means you're gonna see more of the real emergencies, too. I loved it. My preceptor knew his stuff inside out."

After graduation in May 2007, he worked for a New Jersey ambulance company, but the pace was leaden. "The entire company didn't get as many calls in one year as just one ambulance does in Philly," he told me. "I wasn't learning enough."

His Wildwood address meant he couldn't work for Philly EMS, so he took a job in the emergency room of Children's Hospital - a place he loved - and, when the lease was up on his apartment, moved to the city this spring.

He hoped, maybe, to be a Philly paramedic in two years. Instead, to his delight, he got a call just three weeks ago from EMS.

"They wanted to put me into the June 19th class," he said. "I'm very excited. This is the chance I wanted."

Yes, he actually wants the chance to work 12-to-14-hour shifts in a division in which each ambulance makes about 8,000 runs per year - thousands more than the national average.

Those stats worry Dave Kearney, who - though hopeful about new hires like Diaz - still fears they'll flame out and leave before other necessary changes are made in the division.

Kearney says EMS still gets a high volume of nonemergency calls. "And we don't triage the calls when they come in, so we treat a stubbed toe the same as a heart attack," he says. "We operate on a 'you call, we haul' system. It burns you out."

Still, he conceded, waiving the residency requirement is a major part of solving a very complicated problem.

"I hope they keep up the good work," he says.

Did he just say "good work?"

From a career cynic, that's praise indeed. *

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

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