Montclair paramedic truck to be put more into service after battle on overtime with firefighters
By Canan Tasci
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
MONTCLAIR — The city’s lone paramedic squad - which had been out of service for most of last year - will now be fully staffed on a 24-hour basis. The decision comes after a councilman publicly raised concerns about the move.
On Monday, City Manager Edward Starr said he has ordered the vehicle to be staffed around the clock or at least 75 percent of the time.
Last week, Councilman John Dutrey called for a report detailing how many times one of the Fire Department’s three vehicles was out of service. The department has two fire trucks and the paramedic squad.
Dutrey said it was his understanding the paramedic vehicle had been parked for at least 66 percent of the time.
“There was no decision to park the vehicle. What has happened is in response to the economy. Overtime costs for the Fire Department are getting tighter,” Starr explained.
Montclair Firefighters Association president Chris Jackson said, between July 2011 and June 25, the paramedic squad had been out of service 90 percent of the time.
He criticized the other council members for not pressing the issue further and said their decision is having an impact on his department’s ability to provide service to residents.
“The council doesn’t want to make public safety a priority,” he said. “For these council members, public safety is the evil but we are a required infrastructure service in the city.”
Discord between city officials and the fire association is nothing new. For the past two years, both sides have been unable to reach an agreement during contract negotiations. In both instances the council ultimately imposed a contract on the fire department, Starr said.
“I do feel the firefighters association is reacting to the situation of reduced and managed overtime,” he said.
Jackson acknowledged the past issues with officials but said it has nothing to do it with this, rather about providing public safety to residents.
“We’re addressing our main concerns. We owe that to the citizens of Montclair that we provide thorough and efficient service,” he said.
The issue, Starr said, goes back to overtime costs.
As the overtime budget shrank in 2011, Starr said the fire chief began to notice there was an increase in the use of leave time, people started calling in sick and more and more using their holidays.
“The object was to impact overtime costs, we believe, to artificially keep overtime costs up,” Starr said.
The fire chief adopted the practice that when two or more people called in sick he was going to park the rescue squad, he said.
It was the “extraordinary” use in leave time that resulted in the vehicle being parked, he said.
With the third vehicle out, what happens if the two engines are out on calls when a third call comes into the department? It’s a situation that Jackson said has happened multiple times.
In those cases the division shift supervisor will respond by himself, and if extra assistance is needed then the department will rely on the services of AMR. It may take up to eight minutes for the ambulance to respond, he said.
“We are trying our best to provide service for our residents, when that squad is out of service it makes it hard,” Jackson said.
Starr said the fire chief has never indicated to him that the move was compromising public safety. In addition, there were two paramedics on site, with the fire engines, at all times.
Even if both the engines were out on calls, Starr said the city contracts with AMR and there are mutual aid agreements in place where other agencies could respond to an emergency.
“It has not had an adverse impact on public safety because the engine is always staffed with paramedics,” he said.
With the decline in the economy, city officials have been working to reduce the budget. Those efforts included cutting overtime costs, Starr said. In 2007, the fire department racked up $900,000 in overtime and $850,000 another year.
“We couldn’t sustain that, it was not reasonable. When the recession hit, it had to be assessed,” Starr said.
In the last fiscal year, the fire chief was given $500,000 to manage overtime costs.
“I believe the fire chief had the opportunity to manage the overtime; I’m now stepping in,” he said.
Starr and the executive director of public safety, a new position which is being assumed by the police chief starting in July, will be looking at ways to reduce the overtime costs and as well as how the department is structured.
If two people call in sick at one time the practice was the department would call someone else to fill the gap, resulting in overtime.
Starr warned the recent move to staff the third apparatus could push overtime costs for the new fiscal year at $630,000; the council only approved $400,000. The fire chief had requested a little more than $530,000 for this year.
And the notion that the city does not care about public safety is misleading, Starr said. Montclair spends 70 percent of its budget on public safety, he said.
As of now, 45 percent of the city’s overtime costs goes to the 29 employees in the fire department while 49 percent of overtime costs goes to the 62 employees in the police department.
Between those those two departments, Montclair pays $1.2 million in overtime.
“Overtime is not an entitlement that they are supposed to get. Overtime is not a guarantee,” he said.
While almost every department in the city has been hit the economy and budget reductions, the fire department has been spared from layoffs, he noted.
“Compensating public safety is a public concern of the city council,” Starr said. “The first concern of a city council in a recession is we don’t have unlimited funding right now.”
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