In today's paper.
Union rejects giveback deal to keep fire stations open
Staff writer
Turning down a deal negotiated by their leaders, the local firefighters union has overwhelmingly rejected a request to give the city $25,000 in training money to help eliminate an overtime deficit.
The give-back would have allowed more firefighters to work and stations to stay open more often through June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Without the give-back, no overtime will be allowed except to fight multiple-alarm fires.
Mayor Carolyn Kirk and Chief Barry McKay said yesterday that the "no" vote, characterized by the union president as a vote of no confidence in the city and the chief, would mean less fire and emergency medical coverage until a new budget is approved for fiscal 2009, which begins July 1.
Already, since Super Bowl Sunday, there have been a number of shifts with so few firefighters present at roll call that all three neighborhood stations were forced to close. The city has not experienced so little coverage since the 1990s.
McKay said the rejection of the proposal will mean that only Central Station will remain open.
McKay also said he no longer would be able to call firefighters in to work and staff the second ambulance when the first ambulance is on trips to Beverly Hospital. These trips,known as "diversions," from Addison Gilbert Hospital have increased in frequency in the past year.
With fewer firefighters available for calls because the overtime account is empty and frozen, the Police Department is preparing to take a heavier burden of first-responder responsibility.
In a memo issued yesterday by police Lt. Joseph Aiello, dispatchers were told to "consider" sending at least one medically trained police officer to medical calls that now trigger ambulance response.
Kirk said the firefighters' union also refused a short-term waiver of a contract clause that entitles as many as five firefighters to be absent from a shift.
The city and the union leadership had asked the rank-and-file to agree until June 30 to keep shift absences to no more than four. The union's full use of the clause has triggered the closing of all three neighborhood stations. It is part of the expired contract that governs labor-management relations until a new contract is signed.
Kirk and the union leadership negotiated a complex settlement that, through the combined infusion of more than $50,000 from the training account and stabilization fund, would have provided some overtime money to bolster emergency response resources and, Kirk said, give the firefighters a "lifeline."
"They can't have it both ways," Kirk said.
She said a number of incentives included to encourage approval of the settlement are now "off the table."
These, she said, included a promise to include $5,000 in the next city budget for the "health and welfare account," a petty cash account for fire station provisions. She also said she was prepared to establish a reserve account for excess revenues from the ambulance service.
In the wake of the plan's defeat - by a ratio of "better than 2-1," according to union president Capt. Barry Aptt - the City Council tonight is scheduled to reconsider Kirk's proposal to shift $26,801 from the stabilization fund to the Fire Department budget.
Aptt said the union went against the recommendations of its leadership, which had negotiated an emergency funding program with the mayor, and offered it to the rank-and-file Friday night.
Council President Bruce Tobey and Budget and Finance Committee Chairman Jason Grow both declined to guess at what the council might do tonight.
When proposed in January, the transfer from the stabilization fund was linked to the union's giving back the training money to absorb overtime spending, which had skyrocketed far in excess of McKay's expectations.
Kirk proposed charging the $26,801 in overtime needed to fight to Lorraine Apartments fire to the stabilization fund - if the union agreed to give the city $25,000 in overtime money appropriated for training.
"We've got to wait and hear what (the mayor) has to say," said Grow, who opposed the using the stabilization fund to pay for firefighter overtime. Needing six votes, the motion failed 5-3.
Tobey said that, without the give-back by the union, he wasn't sure what incentive the city had for depleting the stabilization fund, which holds about $1.8 million and is considered a sign of a municipality's fiscal health.
In her State of the City report last month, Kirk said the bond agency Moody's was likely to downgrade the city's bond rating, in part due to the reduced size of the fund, which was at $2.5 million in 2004.
Union president Aptt yesterday blamed himself for failing to convince the rank-and-file to support the settlement hammered out with the mayor in a series of meetings since March.
"I'm kind of disappointed in myself," Aptt said. About 30 of the 76 union members participated in Friday's ratification debate and vote, Aptt said. "They're the boss," he said.
He said the reason for the "no" vote was a lack of trust in the Kirk administration and in McKay.
"More than once," Aptt said he heard union members say, "You can't trust the city, you can't trust the chief."
"The administration's hands are tied as a result (of the vote)," Kirk said in a statement to the Times, "and I have instructed the fire chief to put in a place an operational plan for no overtime whatsoever."
The overtime crisis was announced last September by McKay.
He had warned the council in June that a $400,000 appropriation would only last until March or April, but discovered that keeping all stations open all the time was draining the account faster than expected.
Beginning in September, he began closing one or two substations depending on the number of firefighters who appeared at roll call. The assigned count was 18 or 17.
But with firefighters taking advantage of the discretionary absence clause - as many as five could be off - the department either used overtime to bring in firefighters to work the shifts, or officials closed one or more stations.
All three stations were closed for the first times since the '90s on Super Bowl Sunday.
The closing of all three occurs less than 2 percent of the time, McKay said, but the frequency will go up without the use of overtime, except to fight multiple alarm fires.
