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Let me give you a brief summary
of the this agreement.
The city has an existing agreement
with the fire department that calls for 21 suppression firefighters
to be on duty at all times. If one fire fighter is out, we are
required to fill that position at overtime rates. We can not
transfer a person from station to station—we are required
to bring in an additional person.
This has resulted over the
past few years in a fire department salary budget that we simply
can no longer afford.
Here are numbers for our fire
department salary budget over the past few years—this number
includes salary, overtime, sick pay, vacation pay etc.
As you can see, the salary
budget went down dramatically over the past two years. The primary
reason for this was two-fold: first the interim agreement reached
with the firefighters a year ago that allowed what is called
roller skating. Roller skating means that if a firefighter is
out, that we can now transfer a person from one station to another
if we pay that person overtime rates. Notice how this is different
from the agreement prior to a year ago—the old agreement,
we had to bring in a person at overtime rates: we paid the person
who was out, plus a new person at overtime rates, resulting in
paying 2 and half times for one slot. Under the new agreement,
we paid one person at overtime rates, we paid one and half times
for one slot.
The second reason that the
total salary budget went down is that we no longer kept the Bradford
Fire Station open on a full time basis. It was our estimate that
the station was open 50% of the time last year—FY 04. This
year, I added some money to the overtime budget and we estimated
that it would be open more, but still not full time.
The firefighters and I have
been negotiating since I took office in January. We have been
unable to reach agreement on the most substantive issues—health-care
reform and salaries. It appears that we are headed to mediation
or arbitration.
At the last session I attended,
we discussed what interim agreement we could reach while we continued
to disagree. We all came to one conclusion—we did not want
the people of Bradford to suffer while we continued to negotiate.
The agreement that we reached
is simple: we reduce the minimum manning from 21 under the old
agreement to 19, and we allow 8 people, normally 2 per shift
to be transferred without payment of overtime. This allows Bradford
to be kept open.
I have made a chart of how
this works.
|
Agreement date |
Minimum number per shift |
Overtime arrangement |
Required man hours if person out |
|
Old agreement |
21 |
No transfers—bring in new person at
overtime rates |
2.5 |
|
“interim agreement”-- expired |
17 |
Roller skating—pay overtime |
1.5 |
|
New agreement |
19 |
Floaters—no overtime unless fall below
19 men |
1 |
This agreement still results
in our paying overtime. If there are more than two people out
on a particular day, we still need to pay overtime to bring someone
else in. We are expanding service, keeping Bradford open, so
we know that that is an additional cost. I think it is a service
that everyone here on the Council wants and that the community
overwhelmingly wants.
If we simply went by the old
agreement and kept Bradford open, we would pay a cost of $400,000.
We estimate that the cost under this new agreement is $188,000.
To put it another way, if we did not have this agreement and
we simply decided to pay the money and keep Bradford open, then
we would have an additional cost of $210,000. Under this agreement,
we are saving around $200,000.
Here is a chart that shows
that:
The Cost of Keeping Bradford
Open
|
Agreement date |
Cost to keep Bradford Open |
|
Old agreement |
|
|
Interim agreement |
|
|
New agreement |
|
Our last chart, shows you
the decrease in the firefighters salary budget over the years.
|
Year |
Salary Budget |
|
FY 02 |
|
|
FY 03 |
|
|
FY 04 |
|
|
FY 05 |
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As you an see, even with the
additional $188,000, our total salary budget is still $____ below
what it was in FY 03.
Now is this agreement perfect?
Absolutely not. We were able to achieve substantial savings thanks
to these concessions from the firefighters and I thank them publicly
for it. We still have a long way to go—with health care
reform, with combined dispatch.
I know that some questions
have been raised regarding this agreement. We have tried to supply
you with the answers to all the questions that have been received,
and as more questions have come in, we have tried to answer those
also. The questions have been good ones, and I thank the council
for asking them.
One question that I would
ask if I were on the council, although no one has asked it directly
I know that it will be asked tonight, is this: is there another
way to keep the Bradford fire station open. The answer is this:
this is the best way.
You could also keep the station
open by transferring people from dispatch to fire suppression,
something that is an important goal and one that this administration
will work on. Even if we could achieve that in negotiations,
this is a better solution. If we did that, we would still have
what are frankly, terrible overtime rules in place. Combined
dispatch or civilian dispatch saves us some money and I do support
it, but someone still has to answer the telephones. That someone
has to be paid, they have to get benefits and they quickly get
unionized. The savings is much smaller than these concessions
on overtime. I feel that these overtime concessions are _________
and ending these overtime rules were my top negotiating goal.
We did not end them, but we did mend them. We had to give something
to get that, and I feel it is well worth giving—the 19 man
minimum and the small increase in senior fight righter pay.
The second question that I
know that councilors have is a good one, and one that I wrestled
with myself—how do we pay for all this?
*Source: City of Haverhill,
Massachusetts Web Site: www.ci.haverhill.ma.us 2-16-05
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