By Peter Currier
The Sun
LOWELL, Mass. — Amid station brownouts and debate over sick leave and overtime use, the City Council has approved a $1.5 million supplemental appropriation for the Lowell Fire Department to hire an additional 14 firefighters.
The 10-0 vote to provide additional firefighters to an understaffed department came as three other new firefighters are expected to enter the Massachusetts Fire Academy in the coming weeks, and as neighborhood fire stations across Lowell have to go without shifts due to not having enough staff.
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Those station brownouts started coming after a May City Council meeting where City Manager Tom Golden lambasted what he said was excessive sick leave and overtime use by the city’s firefighters, which he said were eating into the budget.
The supplemental $1.5 million appropriation was put before the City Council because Assistant City Manager for Fiscal Affairs Conor Baldwin said the city is in the process of setting the tax rate, but he noted that the intention is for the appropriation to fit within the tax levy and have no impact on tax bills.
The vote was preceded by a memo from Golden to the council, which called the funding a “critical step in advancing the Fire Department toward its staffing target of 213 full-time firefighters.”
“This supplemental appropriation is being brought forward in direct response to consistent feedback from both the City Council and the firefighters’ union, who have emphasized the need to address structural understaffing through the addition of permanent personnel,” says the memo. “By strengthening our workforce, the City hopes it can meaningfully curb overtime expenditures helping ensure that annual overtime costs remain below the $4 million threshold, which has become increasingly difficult to achieve under current staffing levels.”
Councilor Belinda Juran supported the appropriation with the rest of her colleagues but said she felt “little comfort” that it would be helpful to the department in the short term.
“This is a long-term solution, but not a short-term solution,” said Juran. “The memo talks about how this vote would reduce the risk of exceeding the $4 million overtime threshold in the next fiscal year, so there is a lot of wiggle room there. We’re still talking about a $4 million overtime budget over the next several fiscal years, and this might be a hope we don’t exceed $4 million in overtime.”
Baldwin said later he is “cautiously optimistic.”
“But time will tell, and we will know whether this has the desired impact, or whether additional controls are needed or whether additional language we have to negotiate with the union is required to make an impact on the overtime budget,” said Baldwin.
Golden said he does not believe the appropriation is going to immediately stop the fire station closings, but “we believe it is going to get us to a number that is going to assist us.” He noted there are currently 196 firefighters with a budget for 203, while the goal is to get the number of personnel up to 214 with additional fire academy classes in January and April.
Professional Fire Fighters of Lowell Local 853 President Bill Harland was supportive of the appropriation. He recounted a period in the 1990s when the Lowell Fire Department went from 16 to 13 fire companies, a setup that is still in place today, with 240 firefighters covering a city that at the time had a population of about 100,000 people.
“Our population at the last census is 120,000 people, and that is what we know of. There is obviously a lot of people who live here that don’t participate in the census,” said Harland. “The practice of brownouts, which is closing fire companies due to financial constraints, is very dangerous. It is a gamble and it should not continue.”
While the department is operating below its minimum staffing level of 203, and its standard level of 213 firefighters, Harland said ideally the city needs to get that figure up to 229 firefighters in the future.
Councilor Sean McDonough said he was happy to see the appropriation, and that it is a better solution than earlier proposals that would have eliminated six firefighter positions, but that the way it unfolded is not a good way to budget for a city.
“My hope would be that with more information and seeing a clearer picture about where our spending could go, maybe there are some cuts that might have been made, maybe there was some balancing that could have been done,” said McDonough.
“I think this is a much better direction than a reduction of six firefighters, I think this as a policy makes more sense. I agree with the union’s position here that more people means less overtime. I hope that pans out,” McDonough said later. “I would really hope that going forward we are getting a clearer picture at budget time.”
Mayor Erik Gitschier said it is a fault of government for letting the situation get to where it is in Lowell.
“We gave way too much sick time, we gave way too many benefits and this is the result. Every time the federal government or the state votes something in, it gets wheeled on to an unfunded mandate to the local government,” said Gitschier. “And here it is in front of you. You’re watching it.”
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