By Charlie Lardner
The York Dispatch
YORK, Pa. — York City Fire Department paid firefighters $647,830 in overtime in 2010, blowing out the $300,000 fund the city had budgeted for the expense.
In fact, since 2001, overtime pay for the city’s 67 uniformed fire personnel has skyrocketed 875 percent, fire chief Steven Buffington reported to York City Council’s Fire Committee Tuesday.
The costs are driven by excessive sick leave, Buffington said, because the city has to pay overtime to a firefighter who covers for one who takes sick leave does not report to a shift, Buffington said.
In examples of excessive sick leave and overtime pay presented to fire committee members, one firefighter who took 33 days of sick leave also managed to work 324.5 overtime hours in 2010. The city’s costs to cover his absences totaled $9,694, while also paying him $12, 347 in overtime on top of his regular annual earnings of $55,558.
Another firefighter took 43 days of sick leave, costing the city $16,533 in overtime shift coverage.
Top overtime earner examples were one firefighter who made $29,576 in overtime on top of his regular paycheck for combined annual earnings of $87,416. Another firefighter netted $32,425 in overtime for combined annual earnings of $88,424.
“I don’t make that much money,” Buffington said.
Personnel costs are 87 percent of the $9.9 million fire department budget, and so addressing the sick leave and overtime issue is the only way manage the rising costs without layoffs, Buffington said. While the current contract between the city and the firefighters’ union doesn’t expire until 2012, it can be re-opened if both sides agree to do so.
“I don’t think anything untoward is going on, I just think it has become a culture and it has gotten out of hand,” Buffington said. “The city and the union have to sit down, work this out, and get control of it before service is adversely affected by staffing cuts.”
In 2010, city firefighters amassed a total of 620 sick leave shifts, with 29 firefighters using more than 3 sick days.
Only 11 out of the city’s 67 firefighters used no sick leave.
That averages out to 11 days of annual sick leave per-firefighter, Buffington said.
The average annual sick leave taken by members of the city’s police department is three days.
The city’s firefighters work in two shifts. The day shift is a 12 hour stint, while those clocking in for night duty log 14 hours.
One day of sick leave is calculated as a firefighter taking off one shift due to illness or injury.
Generally, overtime pay is one-and-half times the firefighter’s normal hourly pay rate. But if called in on a holiday to cover for someone’s sick leave, it is double the normal pay, Buffington said.
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