Lockport Union-Sun & Journal
NIAGARA FALLS — The City of Lockport and its firefighter union await a decision on whether officials can go through with cutting minimum staffing levels, a fire truck and an ambulance.
And if the city prevails, it could mean the end of the Fire Department’s ambulance service.
The Fire Board voted last month to cut staffing levels down from nine to seven firefighters per shift. The board also ordered one of the two city ambulances and one of the three fire trucks be taken out of service.
But at a Common Council meeting earlier this month, members openly talked about doing away with the ambulance service altogether. According to an affidavit signed last week by Fire Chief Thomas J. Passuite, the loss of the ambulance service may be inevitable.
“Operating the ambulance service compromises the department’s ability to adequately staff our fire apparatus,” Passuite said in the affidavit. “Having been part of this recent city discussion, I fully anticipate that the decision to eliminate the ambulance service is forthcoming.”
The Common Council and Fire Board were supposed to meet this month to talk about doing away with the Fire Department’s ambulance service. The meeting was canceled after the Lockport Professional Fire Fighters Association union obtained a temporary restraining order from Boniello stopping the city’s proposed and Fire Board-approved reductions.
Both sides appeared Wednesday to argue their case before state Supreme Court Justice Ralph A. Boniello III in Niagara Falls. Boniello will issue a decision on whether to lift the restraining order sometime in the near future.
The LPFA’s attorney, Andrea Sammarco, said in court that the union contract commits the city to having sufficient staffing to maintain firefighter safety.
“There is a safety issue not only to the public in this case, but to the firefighters,” Sammarco said.
Sammarco said the union has won two state arbitration awards in the past four years that she said show that cuts that endanger safety are not allowed.
Albany attorney Bryan Goldberger, representing the city, said there’s nothing in the collective bargaining agreement that requires any particular level of staffing or equipment. Goldberger said it is up to the city to determine the level of service it will provide.
“The contract does not require us to have ambulances at all,” Goldberger said.
To prove its case, the LPFA must show the cuts do irreparable harm, both lawyers said. But, Goldberger said the harm must be to the union, a statement Sammarco disagreed with. Harm would come to the public as well, she argued.
“We have submitted concrete examples to show that a reduction in equipment resulted in death,” Sammarco said. “There is nothing more important and irreparable than life.”
That example was the 2012 death of the mother of Alderman John Lombardi III, who went into anaphylactic shock at home on a morning when neither city ambulance was available. Wrights Corners Fire Co. was called to the Lombardi home instead.
Jeanette A. Lombardi passed away a short time later at Eastern Niagara Hospital. The city agreed two weeks ago to pay a cash settlement to Lombardi’s family.
Goldberger called the union’s argument speculative.
“The case cited by the petitioner could have happened no matter how many ambulances there were,” he said.
The city’s position is the restraining order should be lifted because the minimum manning and ambulance issues can be resolved in arbitration, said Deputy Corporation Counsel David Blackley.
In court, Goldberger said a state arbitrator could reverse the city’s proposed cuts, as an arbitrator did five years ago. That’s when the staffing level was set at 10 firefighters per shift, but the union and the city agreed to leave staffing minimums at nine when dispatching duties were shifted to the city Police Department.
This is the latest edition in a series of court battles between the city and the LPFA.
The city recently won another stay of arbitration over a LPFA grievance over whose job it should be to use garage door openers at the firehouse. That case will go before Boniello for a June 25 hearing.
Earlier this year, Lockport won a stay of arbitration over a change in the eligibility rules to take the civil service exam for fire chief. A hearing on how the change in rules occurred has been scheduled for Aug. 7 before Kloch.