ByThomas J. Prohaska
Buffalo News
LOCKPORT, N.Y. — The Common Council voted Wednesday to shift Fire Department dispatching duties to the Police Department as soon as possible.
The Niagara County Sheriff’s Office was the other possibility for the work. The city wants to free up more firefighters for duty on calls instead of at the desk in hopes of reducing overtime.
The Lockport Professional Fire Fighters Association ratified a contract in December that gave the city six months to make the switch.
It the city hadn’t done so, the contract said the minimum staffing level would have risen from nine firefighters per shift to 10, meaning higher overtime costs.
The Fire Department has four platoons, only two of which work on a given day, one for 14 hours and the other for 10.
In cases of vacations or illness, the department calls in firefighters from other platoons when necessary to reach the minimum manning level, and those call-ins are paid time-and-a-half for the whole shift.
“If we go back to 10 [men per shift], that overtime is going to skyrocket,” said Alderman Joseph C. Kibler, R-at Large.
Alderman Andrew D. Chapman, R-4th Ward, said he toured the county dispatch center Monday and was impressed.
Chapman noted that when a 911 call is made from a cell phone or via an Internet phone connection, the call is answered at the county, not at the city, and that won’t change because only the county has the equipment to take those calls.
The county relays such calls to the city, “which means there’s an extra 30-second delay every time,” Chapman said. “The thing I saw is, 50 percent of the calls are cell phone calls.”
Mayor Michael W. Tucker said, “It’s a smoother transition here. If it doesn’t work, we can always go down there [to the county].”
He said the police have to be trained on how to respond over the phone to callers with medical emergencies. At present, the police answer all landline 911 calls in Lockport, but if it’s a fire or ambulance call, they switch it to the fire desk.
Tucker said he expects the police union to seek some compensation for the additional duties, but he doesn’t know what that will be.
Copyright 2010 The Buffalo News