By Larry Sandler
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee Common Council committee voted Thursday to kill the Fire Department’s arson squad and use the money to keep more firefighters on the street.
The council’s Finance & Personnel Committee also supported scaling back the number of unpaid furlough days for police officers next year, from four to two.
But the finance panel rejected other efforts to maintain current levels of firefighter staffing and to eliminate all police furlough days.
Acting on amendments to the 2010 city budget, the committee recommended eliminating two of the three arson investigators. They would be shifted back into firefighting, to ease some — but far from all — of the cuts Mayor Tom Barrett recommended in the overtime pay used to fill in for sick or vacationing firefighters. In its original form, the overtime cut was projected to knock one or two firefighting companies out of service each day, on a rotating basis.
Ald. Michael Murphy, the panel chairman, said the six-month-old fire cause investigation unit was duplicating police work. Budget director Mark Nicolini said the unit was useful in establishing the causes of fires that did not result from arson. One unit member’s job would be retained because it is financed by grant money.
The committee also recommended eliminating the job of Fire Department spokeswoman Tiffany Wynn, also to scale back the overtime cut. Murphy said keeping more firefighters on active duty was a higher priority than public relations.
Panel members defeated other amendments that would have rejected the rest of the overtime cut. They also left intact Barrett’s plans to trim ladder truck crews from five firefighters to four in the last eight ladder companies that still have five-member crews, and to close one ladder company and one pumper engine company. The mayor’s budget would not shut any firehouses or lay off any firefighters, but the firefighters union has argued the staffing cuts would jeopardize safety.
Murphy also pushed through an amendment that would halve the number of furlough days for most police officers, but not for top commanders or civilian Police Department employees. Police Chief Edward Flynn and the police union had warned that the staffing cut could hamper crime-fighting efforts.
Judy Pal, Flynn’s chief of staff, said he would prefer to have the same number of unpaid days off for everyone in the department. Barrett’s budget would have imposed four furlough days on every city employee except firefighters. The committee defeated amendments from Ald. Bob Donovan to eliminate the remaining police furlough days, including those for civilians and managers.
Barrett supports the panel’s recommendations on police furloughs and firefighter overtime, said his chief of staff, Patrick Curley.
After a full day of work, the committee’s changes would add about $237,000 to Barrett’s proposed $247.4 million proposed tax levy, and about 1 cent to the mayor’s proposed tax rate of $8.92 per $1,000 assessed valuation, if the full council agrees, city budget staffers said. That compares with this year’s $237 million levy and $8.09 tax rate.
Copyright 2009 Journal Sentinel Inc.