By Marisa Donelan
The Sentinel & Enterprise
LEOMINSTER, Mass. — City Councilors are being asked to approve $150,000 to cover Leominster Fire Department overtime costs, an expense caused by the number of unfilled positions on the department, officials said Monday.
Six senior members of the fire department retired this year, but new employees have not yet been hired, acting Fire Chief Daniel Kirouac said Monday.
One-third of the money in the most recent request is already in the budget — if approved, $50,000 would be shifted from the fire salaries account to overtime — but $100,000 is being requested from free cash, which is excess taxpayer money and unspent grant money.
“It’s going to continue to go up if we don’t have those positions filled,” Kirouac said.
The request is on the agenda for Wednesday night’s City Council Finance Committee meeting, which starts at 6:30 p.m. in City Hall.
As of last week, the Leominster Fire Department’s overtime costs this fiscal year were $643,000. A $19,000 grant paid for overtime costs for a recent regional training exercise, and the city also received $90,000 in economic stimulus money that went toward overtime, Kirouac said.
An average year requires $625,000 to $650,000 in fire overtime, said Ward 4 Councilor Robert Salvatelli, who pointed out this year’s costs will be about $900,000 once the grants, stimulus money and transferred salary money are taken into account.
“We have absolutely no say in it,” he said Monday. “Once the budget process starts, then we can talk about how to reduce costs, but even then, I’m not sure what will change.”
Salvatelli estimated the vacant positions account for about $200,000 worth of overtime.
“The problem is not enough firefighters, and the firefighters we have are getting hurt,” he said. “There’s been a high number of injuries this year.”
Mayor Dean Mazzarella said Monday he hopes to negotiate more flexible staffing with both the fire and police departments, which would allow some newer hires to have flexible schedules — that way, he said, someone can be shifted to fill a vacancy caused by illness, vacation or retirement.
“Even if we hired new people, if we had some employees out, it would require overtime, because right now we can’t move them,” he said.
Mazzarella said his intention is to hire new firefighters, but the fiscal year 2011 budget is not finished yet.
He also said paying overtime is more cost-effective than hiring new staff, because new full-time employees would require the additional costs of benefits.
The department has a handful of qualified people ready to move through the hiring process, but the number of firefighters the city will be able to take on is unknown, because the budget hasn’t been finalized, Kirouac said.
“It’s sort of up in the air because we’re still working through the budget process,” he said.
Overtime costs are automatic when that many positions are unfilled, because a certain number of people need to be working on every shift, he said.
“We’re down six actual physical vacancies, and on top of that, we have a few long-term sicknesses and injuries that have kept people out,” Kirouac said. “The vacancies that we’ve been carrying are exacerbated by things like vacations and injuries.”
There are some cost-management solutions, but they would represent significant sacrifices for the fire union, Salvatelli said. One would be to renegotiate minimum staffing policies so overtime staffing wouldn’t be as automatic as it is now.
“You’re asking the unions to give up something very substantial,” he said.
Copyright 2010 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Mid-States Newspapers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved