The agenda for Tuesday night’s council meeting was brief, but the meeting took additional time because the council did a much-needed deep dive into Fire Department overtime spending. The issue arose due to a proposed Vote in which City Manager Tom Golden recommended that the council do two things: Increase the amount of money raised from taxpayers this fiscal year by an additional $900,000 for the Fire Department overtime account; and transfer $600,000 from the Salary Stabilization Fund to the same Fire Department overtime account. (The Vote document and a lengthy report are available online).
The Salary Stabilization Fund initially contained $2 million appropriated from FY21 Free Cash; $1 million of that was used to fund the FY23 budget so with this $600,000 transfer out, $400,000 will remain.
This total transfer of $1.5 million into the Fire Department overtime account doubles the $1.5 million already in the FY23 budget. When that budget was set last summer – FY23 runs from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2022 – City Councilor Erik Gitschier asked Fire Chief Phillip Charron if that initial $1.5 million in overtime funding would be enough to get through the entire fiscal year. The Chief said it would, but that has proven to be incorrect. In fact, it seems that the now $3 million overtime account will be insufficient to make it through this fiscal year since the memo in support of the vote (which was also a response to previous motions by Councilors Gitschier and Vesna Nuon on FD overtime) states that an additional $314,000 for overtime payments will likely be available from the Department’s salary and wages account due to retirements and vacancies.
The “authorized” staffing of the Lowell Fire Department (LFD) is 213 people. This is set by an ordinance enacted by the City Council but is also part of the collective bargaining agreement with the firefighters. If the city were to decide that the best way to reduce overtime was to increase the number of firefighters in the department, it would have to be bargained with the firefighters’ union. Is that something the union would support? Perhaps, since it would help ensure adequate staffing which is a safety issue, but it also would be contrary to the financial interests of current firefighters who derive higher salaries by working more overtime. (A prior version of this post erroneously stated the overtime pay counts towards an individual’s pension; that turns out to not be the case). While the union’s concurrence would not be required to accomplish this – the matter just has to be “bargained” – union opposition would make it more difficult to accomplish.
Even though the authorized strength of the LFD is 213 people, retirements and other departures make the number of people employed considerably lower. The Chief, either in his report or in his remarks, said they are down 18 people. There are 12 new firefighters in training, but that will still leave the department shorthanded. (Getting new firefighters trained is a lengthy process made worse by Covid which reduced training opportunities). Besides these vacancies, other firefighters (15?) have assignments other than staffing firehouse shifts.
That’s the available personnel. Now let’s look at personnel requirements. The LFD has 13 fire trucks (called “companies”) assigned to 8 firehouses. To operate, each truck requires three people. This requirement is not only functional – fewer than three would be unable to do the job – but also a function of firefighter safety. It is also required by the collective bargaining agreement. With 13 trucks requiring 3 people each, the city needs 39 people per shift PLUS two deputy chiefs (who drive “chief cars”) for a total of 41 per shift.
The fire department must operate 24 hours per day, seven days per week. For staffing purposes, each day is divided into a 10-hour shift and a 14-hour shift. To cover those two shifts seven days per week, fire department personnel are organized into four “groups” which operate in some kind of rotation.
Remember, to keep all equipment in operation requires a minimum of 41 people per shift. If there are more than that assigned to a shift, the extra people can be moved from one company to another to fill vacancies with those already on duty. However, if there are no spare personnel on shift, an off-duty person must be called in to cover any absence. That person gets paid overtime.
The Chief explained that due to the reduced number of personnel now in the department, there are only one or two extra people per group. He added that with full staffing, there would be up to six spare people per shift so the need to call someone in and pay overtime would be diminished.
There are many reasons why a person scheduled to work may be absent. The Chief stated that the collective bargaining agreement allows eight per shift to be on vacation, another one to be on a compensatory day, and, during the summer, another three may be absent for something called “vacation weeks.” Based on that, a shift in the summer that has 42 people assigned – one above the 41 minimum – could have 12 of those 42 on vacation leaving just 30 on the shift. That means 11 off duty personnel would be called in and paid overtime. And that’s without any of the remaining 30 calling in sick.
And people do call in sick. It seems self-evident that the incidence of sickness and injury among firefighters would be higher than among office workers, so a certain amount of sick time is understandable. However, the report included disturbing information about excessive sick time usage. The Chief stated that in May, near the end of FY22, 38 firefighters were “counseled” for “excessive sick time usage.” Going forward, these 38 individuals must present a note from a doctor anytime they call in sick. The Chief reported that since this crack down, there has been a 21% reduction in the amount spent on overtime.
Why do I characterize this as “disturbing?” Rounding up, there are approximately 200 firefighters in Lowell and 40 of them have just been counseled for excessive use of sick time. That means that one out of five or 20% of Lowell Fire Department personnel have been disciplined for excessive sick time within the context of the collective bargaining agreement. Is this something new or has it been going on for a long time? If the latter, what did management do about it? (I’m guessing not much since it is now being presented as a new strategy for getting overtime spending under control). Those are all questions city councilors might want to ask.
To be fair, councilors should also ask whether any of the 38 have filed grievances of the discipline in accordance with their collective bargaining agreement and, if so, what was the result.
Dipping back in Lowell political history, fire department overtime was a huge issue back in the 1990s when Dick Johnson was city manager. Johnson alleged that firefighters were systematically calling in sick so that off duty colleagues could earn overtime when called in as replacements with those colleagues reciprocating when they were scheduled to work. Johnson had the full editorial support of the Lowell Sun which faced the ire of firefighters who waged a “The Sun Ain’t So Hot” public relations campaign against the newspaper. There was no clear resolution but that’s when management may have started shutting down firetrucks rather than paying overtime due to firefighter absenteeism.
Until recently, the practice of shutting down firetrucks for inadequate staffing was common. In FY21, for instance, individual fire trucks were shut down on 691 shifts. But the current city council has been unwavering in its commitment to keeping all fire trucks in operation all the time, so shutting down a firetruck – called a “brownout” – is no longer an option for management.
That invites the question, does having 13 fire trucks in operation optimize protection for city residents and their property? Wouldn’t we all be safer with 15 trucks? Or 20? Why is 13 the desired number? It really is an arbitrary decision because it’s impossible to quantify the increased risk with just 13 trucks compared to 15 or 20, just as it’s impossible to quantify the increased risk of 11 instead of 13.
Contributing to the arbitrariness of coverage is the difficulty in making comparisons to other places. Lowell has densely packed, heavily populated neighborhoods that require a faster and larger response of equipment and personnel than needed in a suburban setting. And Lowell is unique in the number of “water obstacles” that disrupt the city’s trafficability. Besides two major rivers, there are seven or eight canals that create choke points that extend response times. Other factors – high rise buildings, industrial concerns with dangerous chemical, many unhoused individuals and people with addictions – make Lowell’s safety calculation very complicated.
But if your house is on fire or if you are in cardiac arrest, you want firefighters to arrive as quickly as possible. Having a truck closed due to staffing shortages certainly could increase that response time, but my point is that the response time even with all trucks fully staffed is arbitrary because you could always have more.
Councilors face a “no win” situation. If they take a firm line against spending and opt for closing trucks instead of overtime, anytime there is a fire during a shift with one or more trucks closed, the councilors will be condemned for shortchanging public safety. But imposing an ironclad mandate that no firetruck ever be shut down for staffing reasons gives a blank check to firefighters to maximize overtime earnings.
The key to controlling costs under current circumstances is for management (which is the Fire Chief and City Manager since everyone else in the fire department including the deputy chiefs are all part of the same union) to be aggressive about absenteeism within the confines of the current collective bargaining agreement. As the Chief said, since the 38 firefighters were disciplined for excessive sick time usage, overtime spending has been cut by 21%. In an account that now stands at $3 million, that would be a savings of $630,000. But management’s task is made more difficult by the political influence of the firefighters’ union on local elected officials. (To see the council recipients of firefighter union campaign contributions, go to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance site and enter Local 853 in the “contributor” field).
In his memo, the Chief identified three objectives that could help in the long term, however, all must be collectively bargained with the firefighter’s union. They are:
Adjust vacation parameters
Increase overall number of personnel
Create incentives for individuals to provide early notice of retirement (to give the city time to hire replacements).
Early in this discussion, Councilor Gitschier pointed out that many line items in the city budget are not fully spent during the fiscal year with the surplus being rolled over as “free cash” for future use. He proposed that instead of imposing a new tax increase to pay the extra overtime, that the city assume the needed money will be available from surpluses already in the budget. Councilor Rita Mercier asked CFO Conor Baldwin about this. He answered that the recommended approach “is the most sustainable and the best path moving forward,” adding that the city has already spent substantial amounts of its free cash on current operations and that any surplus in this year’s budget should be used to replenish that free cash amount. He added that if that is not done, bond rating agencies will penalize the city with higher interest rates.
The council adopted the recommended tax increase and transfer by a vote of 8 to 1 with Council Gitschier in opposition and Councilors Vesna Nuon and Kim Scott absent.
********
There is no City Council meeting this coming week. It was cancelled because the Thanksgiving holiday made it impractical to properly prepare an agenda for a meeting on November 29.
********
Last week on richardhowe.com, I wrote about how Thanksgiving was celebrated in Lowell 100 years ago, and today I wrote about my observations as one of the five billion people now watching the World Cup.
A prior version of this post erroneously stated the overtime pay counts towards an individual’s pension; that turns out to not be the case. -Richard Howe
This piece, with its deep dive into the matter of Lowell Fire Department staffing, budget, and sick days/overtime is an excellent example of why local journalism is so important for a community. By shining light on some of the complicated issues a city and its representatives must deal with, it brings added transparency and helps citizens understand how and why their taxes and being spent.