By J Brown
Vallejo Times Herald (California)
Copyright 2007 The Times-Herald
All Rights Reserved
VALLEJO, Calif. — Years of haggling over the cost of firefighting in Vallejo will culminate this week when the city and fire union go head to head in binding arbitration for the first time in nearly 20 years.
But, as City Manager Joe Tanner has said repeatedly, no matter who wins, everyone loses.
If Vallejo is allowed to make $4 million in fire service cuts approved by the City Council in June, public safety ranks will shrink at a time when violent crime continues to plague the city and the number of medical calls persists.
If the union wins, the city could be forced to make deep slashes in other departments’ operations.
And outside of the end result, the battle itself is getting expensive. So far, according to city records, Vallejo has spent roughly $300,000 for outside labor attorneys, who have twice dragged the union into court. The bill will only grow after this week’s arbitration hearings.
Despite repeated requests, union leaders have declined to state exactly how much prominent labor attorney Alan Davis has charged to fight the city.
In arbitration, the city will seek to reduce the fire department’s daily minimum staffing level by four positions. The union argues that, after losing nearly 20 positions in the last several years, further cuts would endanger public safety.
If the city wins, Tanner said, he will cut the four positions used to staff the city’s sole truck company, and use firefighters from one of Vallejo’s eight engine companies to cross-staff the truck instead.
Union leaders say that would harm the department’s ability to respond to simultaneous medical and fire calls.
But if Vallejo loses, Tanner said, he may reinstate 14 fire department layoffs or close fire stations.
“The end result will be it will take longer to get to a fire and increase the geographical area for each firehouse that stays open,” Tanner said Friday.
He also said he may not replace a fire engine that crashed recently, and instead use the $300,000 in insurance money to pay fire department salaries.
Tanner has also warned that he may have to make drastic personnel cuts in other departments at City Hall, including the vital economic development wing.
Fire union president Kurt Henke and Vallejo’s hired labor negotiator, Scott Kenley, will meet with arbitrator Tom Angelo beginning Tuesday at a Vallejo hotel. Follow-up hearings are slated for Wednesday and Thursday, with Angelo’s decision expected by Sept. 15.
The two sides will argue over whether the city has the right to cut the daily minimum staffing level from 28 to 24, which translates into a three-member crew at each of the eight stations.
Right now, whenever the daily ranks slip below 28 because of vacations or injuries, the city must pay overtime, which last year cost $3 million.
“If we win, we win in the sense that safety of firefighters and citizens is upheld,” union spokesman Jon Riley said. “That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
The road to arbitration has been long and bumpy.
For more than a decade, the fire union’s contract with the city has been a heated political issue. Past councils have extended the contract in order to exact savings in the form of deferred raises.
But after months of talks last year, the City Council voted against a savings deal in December because it involved a two-year contract extension that a majority of members loathe.
That majority said they had to stop Vallejo’s history of perpetuating pacts the city cannot afford. Economic development plans - set in motion years ago for several parts of town - have yet to bear significant fruit.
In March, after just two months on the job, Tanner announced Vallejo was facing a $7 million deficit that would grow to $9 million by the summer and $13 million by next year if cuts weren’t made.
Immediately, accusations started to fly about who was to blame and whether there was really even a crisis.
Union critics said Vallejo can ill-afford the overtime triggered by the staffing levels, let alone basic salary and benefits packages that start at $167,000 annually for a beginning firefighter- paramedic.
But, as the union leaders intend to argue in arbitration, the city has at least $15 million in discretionary funds it could use to fix the deficit. The union says the city itself created the deficit by bailing out the overextended transit system and marina.
Although both sides made public overtures to settle the dispute outside arbitration, they privately prepared for battle, with a majority of council members pushing Tanner to take the union to the mat.
The city filed unfair labor practice charges, saying union leaders were stalling and that Davis, the union lawyer, had threatened and intimidated an attorney working for the city.
Tanner also threatened to lay off the 14 fire de-partment employees, but later retreated, saying he wanted a cooling off period only to continue the march toward arbitration.
The union took its shots, as well, claiming Tanner and finance director Rob Stout were squirreling away money that could be used to solve the deficit.
The union also charged that the council majority’s stand was a personal attack on union president Henke, who has unsuccessfully sued city officials twice.
Union leaders also said the layoff notices were a scare tactic - that if the city loses arbitration, it did not need to cut firefighters who would be needed to fill the unchanged staffing level.
After the two sides agreed to use arbitrator Ron Hoh, the union asked him to recuse himself after Hoh blurted out that he once worked with the city’s chief labor consultant, Jeff Sloan.
Although Hoh bowed out without a fight, the city blamed the union for the delay, saying there was no conflict of interest. But the matter left some wondering why Sloan never mentioned his connection with Hoh in the first place.
After a judge asked the two sides to reach an agreement by mid-September, they agreed to use Angelo, an arbitrator who will also settle the city’s arbitration with the police union over $3 million in cuts the council OK’d for the police department.