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Meeting to deal with Boardman fire staffing and OT
BOARDMAN
The township administrator will meet with members of the fire department Friday to address overtime issues and ease tensions.
“We’ll see if we can amicably work this out,” said Administrator Jason Loree.
Loree, however, also said that based on protections of vacations in the fire department throughout the summer, “it will be an impossibility for the township to continue to do the manning as we have been.”
Tension arose between the administration and International Association of Firefighters Local 1176 this week after union president Harry Wolfe issued a statement that the “department is understaffed and that public safety is threatened.”
Wolfe later said the union’s concern was the lowering of minimum staffing requirements, which is currently nine per shift, justified by the current use of overtime to maintain those requirements.
The fire department had 910 hours of overtime from January to March 2011 compared with 234 hours in the same time period last year.
The administration responded late Tuesday with a plan to contract with an emergency medical service company and to consider re-instituting the volunteer firefighters to bolster staffing.
On Wednesday, Wolfe said that the township is beyond the time of volunteer firefighters, a practice that ended in 2007.
“There were very few times [volunteers] did arrive to an emergency, and when they did, many times they were not participating. They would roll up hoses” after the emergency, said Wolfe, who is a former volunteer firefighter.
Trustee Chairman Thomas Costello offered a different perspective as to why volunteer firefighters were phased out of the township fire department.
“Our full-time firefighters ran them off ... and treated them like second-class citizens,” Costello said, adding that when the decision was made to stop the program, only a handful of volunteer firefighters remained.
Costello said the township appropriated about $100,000 in fire department overtime costs for 2011, and already half of that amount has been used.
“The sooner you address it, the better off you are,” he said.
Fiscal Officer William Leicht said the 2011 appropriation for the department is $4.4 million. The 2010 appropriation was almost $4.1 million, but the township actually spent about $4.3 million by the end of 2010, he said.
“We just increased [the appropriation] in 2011 to cover the cost of the retirees,” Leicht said.
Three firefighters and the fire chief have or will retire this year, and will receive payouts, Costello said.
He added that those payouts vary greatly depending on individual employees, from $1,000 to $70,000.
“I want safety for everybody, not just the firefighters but all of our residents and firefighters. [Wolfe’s] job is to represent the 40 or so people in his union. My job is to represent 40,000 people. Sometimes those interests don’t always head down the same path and the same road,” Costello said.
Wolfe said he does have the safety of all township residents in mind, and that is why he opposes the use of volunteer firefighters and a joint fire district.
“So you join a fire district and have them all responding all over these areas with the same amount of people? You’re just sending them in multiple directions and have a larger coverage area,” he said.
“I don’t know how that actually fits a safe mold. If you want to gamble, that’s what it is. I refuse to just let them gamble with our safety. We still have a job to do. We still have a community to protect,” he said.
There are several joint fire districts in the Valley, such as the Western Reserve Joint Fire District that covers Poland township and village; the Cardinal Joint Fire District that covers Canfield township and city; and the Eagle Joint Fire District that covers Hubbard township and city.