Editor's Note: When the Lawrence Fire Department cut staffing a few years ago, Dr. Harry Carter wrote the following column.
April 27--LAWRENCE -- The Lawrence Fire Department is sidelining fire trucks to avoid overspending its budget.
Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera said it's a short-term fiscal policy he instituted after recently learning the city faces a potential cost overrun of up to $200,000 for fire services for the fiscal year ending June 30.
"We already have a spending freeze in place to make sure anything that gets paid for is absolutely necessary," Rivera said in an interview Friday.
"But it's not the only thing we're doing. We want to make sure we have enough money to get us through the year," the mayor said.
After conferring with Interim Fire Chief John Marsh, officials of Lawrence Firefighters Local 146 union and the city's state-appointed fiscal overseer, Rivera said his administration has developed a temporary staffing plan for the Fire Department that would involve taking one fire engine or ladder truck out of service for as little as four hours or as long as a day.
"The first step is that firefighters will do their best not to take any unplanned personal and vacation time in the next 10 weeks," Rivera said in a one-page statement released Friday on Fire Department budget issues.
"So if everyone shows up to work as scheduled, we should not have any issues at all. In the event that we fall below the full complement, we will manage the schedule to brown out apparatus in a priority manner; insuring that we have as much coverage as we can. We will review this on a day-to-day basis," the mayor said.
A full complement, according to Chief Marsh, is 24 full-time personnel on duty during a 24-hour shift. This would include 21 firefighters, two staffers at fire alarm headquarters and a deputy chief. The 21 firefighters would be the minimum needed to keep a fleet of seven vehicles in service, which would include four fire engines, two ladder trucks and a rescue vehicle. The Fire Department maintains a minimum of three firefighters per vehicle.
"Anything below 24 (staff) takes one vehicle out of service," Marsh said.
Under the plan to bring personnel costs under control, the number of full-time staff for a 24-hour shift would have to drop below 21 before the department could bring in replacements through overtime. This would keep six vehicles in service, according to the chief.
The Fire Department has had one vehicle out of service on four occasions for a shift or part of a shift since the plan went into effect on Easter Sunday. Marsh said he's left it up to each deputy chief to determine which vehicle to remove.
"Our only alternative at this point was to actually close down an apparatus full-time, so it wouldn't be working until July 1st," Marsh said.
"We've done this instead. It's very confusing for the deputies," he said. "It's an administrative nightmare, to say the least. It's going to be a tightrope walk through July.
"The hope is it will work. I don't know how realistic it will be. But, I absolutely have to be optimistic that it will work. I'm looking forward to July, when the pain we go through now will be over," the chief said.
The mayor said the city won't have to worry about laying off firefighters or closing fire stations if the plan succeeds.
Rivera, who took office in early January, said the Fire Department's fiscal dilemma stems from a budget "I didn't vote for, but inherited."
"The Fire Department personnel budget did not account for unforeseen retirements and use of new contractual language," the mayor noted in his one-page explanation for the problem.
"These two things have increased the budget. That however, is the past and we cannot change it. The problem now belongs to me, the Chief and Union leadership and we are working together to make sure that we keep as much of the current level of fire protection city-wide, that we keep as many apparatus open as we can, and that no firefighters are laid off, all the time insuring that we not bust the budget or use one time money to run our services. This plan is the best we can do to balance all the needs."
Rivera said he doesn't expect putting fire apparatus out of service to be "a regular occurrence."
"If it is, we will review the budget to adjust it as necessary," the mayor said.
"We're going to tighten our belts, manage the staffing and provide citizens safety coverage so we don't have to use reserves to run our fire services. We have been working with the overseer, the chief and the union and keeping the councilors informed, too," he said.
Marsh said he's expecting the next two months to be challenging ones for the Fire Department, noting that there are eight openings left unfilled by the administration of former Mayor William Lantigua, who lost his bid for a second four-year term last fall. In addition, there are five firefighters who are currently inactive after being injured in the line of duty.
"We're almost behind to start with," Marsh said.
"The mayor's goal is to save taxpayers' money, which he should be doing. The union's job is to save jobs, which they should be doing. My job is to save lives. We're all trying to work together to get through this. I will be glad to see this situation go away," he said.
The fiscal climate facing the city's fire services is not as turbulent as it was four years ago, when Lantigua laid off 23 firefighters and closed the Engine 9 firehouse -- the third fire station that had been shut within a year due to the city's financial crisis -- to balance the budget.
But Rivera warned in his statement on the Fire Department budget last Friday "it has become abundantly clear that the Fire Department personnel budget will be over budget at the end of this fiscal year if we continue at the current rate for staffing and use of overtime in the department on a daily basis."
Lawrence Fire Budget
Copyright 2014 - The Eagle-Tribune, North Andover, Mass.
