The Buffalo News
LOCKPORT, N.Y. — The city’s controversial decision to do away with the Fire Department’s ambulance service and reduce the minimum personnel on each fire shift from nine to six coincided with an immediate end to high overtime costs.
“It made a huge impact,” said Mayor Anne E. McCaffrey, who attributed that to the ambulance abolition. But Kevin W. Pratt, president of the Lockport Professional Fire Fighters Association, said the end of the summer, the prime vacation season, was the real reason.
Be that as it may, once the city’s two ambulances were parked Sept. 15, overtime almost ended. From then through Friday, there had been only one shift on which anyone worked overtime in the Fire Department, McCaffrey and Fire Chief Thomas J. Passuite said.
The department has four platoons, one per shift. It has two shifts a day, one lasting 14 hours and the other 10 hours.
If a platoon can’t field enough firefighters to meet the minimum personnel level for whatever reason, replacements are called in from other platoons and paid time-and-a-half for the whole shift.
Passuite said a 14-hour overtime shift costs about $700. Only one such shift has been worked since Sept. 15, and that by only one firefighter.
However, the damage to the city’s budget is long since done. City Treasurer Michael E. White said that as of Friday, Fire Department overtime costs this year were $621,645, which is $106,542 more than budgeted for the entire year.
But the switch to Twin City Ambulance has worked as intended, officials said. “Everything’s running very smoothly. We have more ambulance resources,” Passuite said, because Twin City is keeping two ambulances nearby at all times, with a third in peak periods.
Passuite said, “When we had two ambulances, if we got a third or fourth call, they went to mutual aid. They were always delayed at least half an hour.” But since Sept. 15, “we haven’t used mutual aid once.”
Twin City CEO Bryan A. Brauner said, “Our experience has been wonderful. They’ve been great partners.”
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