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Mass. chief: Budget cuts will shrink firefighter staffing

Fire Chief Robert Leary expects staffing to drop from 93 to 89

By Allison Manning
The Patriot Ledger

WEYMOUTH, Mass. — A smaller fire department budget will mean fewer firefighters on the job next year, Fire Chief Robert Leary said.

The mayor is proposing a $7.4 million operating budget for the fire department next year, a decrease of $350,000 from this year’s budget.

Leary said the cut will mean reducing the staff of firefighters from 93 to 89.

He does not expect immediate layoffs. Instead, four vacancies will go unfilled and two firefighters who are expected to retire will not be replaced, Leary told the town council’s budget management committee Monday night.

The $7.4 million allocation for the fire department is part of the mayor’s proposed $126 million budget for next fiscal year.

The minimum number of firefighters on a shift would drop from 17 to 15, and one of the town’s three engines would intermittently go out of service, the chief said.

“Understaffing may save money, but it will never save property or lives,” Leary said. “In my tenure as fire chief, I have been frustrated in my attempts to provide sufficient fire protection to meet the ever-growing and ever-changing demand for our services.”

The remaining two engines and two ladders would be split between stations in North and South Weymouth, he said.

In 1981, before Proposition 2½, the state’s property-tax-limiting law, took effect, Weymouth had 137 firefighters, Leary said. That number had dropped to 88 by 1993.

Leary said he will cap overtime spending on a week-to-week basis. With vacancies and fewer firefighters this year, more overtime was used, prompting a transfer of $150,000 from the regular salary line item to the overtime budget. Now that those positions, which were vacant but still carried in the budget, will be gone, so will be the option of using some of that money for overtime.

The department is awaiting an arbitrator’s ruling on the firefighters union contract for the 2008 through 2010 budget years. If the ruling results in a pay increase, the money will have to come from department salaries, and that could result in layoffs, Leary said.

Councilors asked about repairs to Station 2 on Broad Street, which houses dispatching and administrative personnel. Councilor Kenneth DiFazio questioned whether it would have been better to save money rather than repair a building where no firefighters are stationed.

“We didn’t want it to go into any further disrepair,” Leary said, noting that the building was leaking and contained mold. “It preserved the integrity of the building.”

Councilors also asked when they should expect to see the new fire engine, funding for which was approved in October. Leary said the engine, which needed to be built from scratch, will arrive from the assembly line in Florida in June.

Copyright 2010 The Patriot Ledger

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