By OLIVIA MUNOZ
The Associated Press
DETROIT - The city said Thursday it would cut 75 more fire department jobs and deactivate some firefighting units to help address a budget crisis that also has forced reductions in the police force and other city services.
The cuts are in addition to the 113 department jobs trimmed in July and come as Detroit faces a possible state takeover of its finances. The latest cuts involve 65 firefighters and 10 battalion chiefs.
''Everyone in the Detroit Fire Department is going to have to do more work,’' Fire Commissioner Tyrone Scott said.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said the cuts amount to only $8 million of the $15 million that city council requested. ''There’s $7 million still out there,’' he said.
Kilpatrick, a first-term mayor who is up for re-election Nov. 8, said he is not looking at any more cuts in the fire or police departments after these.
''I have to be concerned about the budget but also about public safety,’' he said.
Kilpatrick’s opponent in the mayoral race, Freman Hendrix, has said he would cut unnecessary departments - but not police or firefighters - to help the cash-strapped city balance its budget.
Hendrix was deputy mayor under Kilpatrick’s predecessor, Dennis Archer. Kilpatrick has said that the Archer administration - and by extension Hendrix - had the chance to fix many of the city’s problems but didn’t, and left him to clean up messes that were worse than he expected coming into office.
The city budget that went into effect this summer contained cutbacks of $300 million, forcing reductions in bus, trash and other services and staff layoffs. If things don’t improve, the city could go into receivership and be taken over by the state.
Following the latest cuts, Detroit will have about 1,100 firefighters, as well as 36 engine companies, 20 ladder companies and 16 battalion chiefs, the department said.
Scott noted that the five companies targeting in the cutbacks could be reactivated later.
Dan McNamara, president of the Detroit Firefighters Association, Local 344, said Thursday’s announcement was another slap in the face to a department that has already faced severe cutbacks.
He said the union would fight back, didn’t specify what the firefighters would do next. Recently, the union bought airtime on local radio asking citizens to call Kilpatrick’s office to protest layoffs.
''This is going to impact our response times, the safety of the city and the people who live and visit here,’' McNamara said.
The police cuts announced Monday would result in layoffs of 150 police officers and would merge 12 police precincts into six district stations. Before those cutbacks, the department had about 3,500 officers and over 700 of those positions were unfilled.
City Council had requested that Kilpatrick cut $54 million from the police budget, but he said the rest of the cuts will come from other departments and through attrition.
Detroit has lost about half its population since a half-century ago, when the city and the American automotive industry were at their peaks. It is now listed as the country’s 11th-largest city, with just more than 900,000 residents.
And according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey released this week, more than one-third of the city’s residents were living at or below the federal poverty line in 2004. At 33.6 percent, Detroit has the largest percentage of any U.S. city of 250,000 or more people.