Fire Department Overtime

Earlier this year, after the fire levy was passed, a document was put together by several members of the Fire Department regarding the cost of overtime and the potential benefit of hiring more firefighters in an effort to reduce overtime. This report seemed to indicate that overtime would almost be eliminated if three firefighters were to be hired into the department.

Unfortunately, further review of the information indicated problems with the assumptions, calculations and methodology used. At our June 17 trustee meeting, Fire Chief Welsh acknowledged that the data used to make calculations was inaccurate and the methodology was flawed.

Reality is that numerous factors contribute to overtime, including training schedules, family and medical leave, military leave, minimum manning, shift holdovers, large incidents, etc. While hiring an additional fire fighter may lower some categories of overtime, it will actually increase other categories of overtime.

I am constantly reviewing financial information to make sure we are operating as efficiently as possible while maintaining the high level of services our community is used to. This includes analyzing the affects of recalling firefighters from laid-off status. At this point, due to retirements, etc., we have been able to recall two of the three laid-off firefighters. We are maintaining 52 firefighters on staff until we begin to receive the proceeds of the 1.25 mill levy next February, at which time we can begin to implement the staffing proposals of the levy.