Fourth in a series
Re “Sellers: Fire Chiefs Have Been Saying for Years, We Need More People”
Responding to a story here last month that reported the Fire Dept. reaches $1.5 million a year in overtime charges, Chief Chris Sellers said that in the mid-1990s, the department was hit with personnel reductions that took Culver City below the staffing levels of surrounding fire companies.
“We have what we consider minimum staffing on all of our apparatus,” he said.
“What we have to do is to ensure every day that every one of those 18 positions is filled with proper people, whether it be a captain, an engineer, a firefighter, a firefighter paramedic or a battalion chief.
“Those positions are identified, and they are staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
“This is how we do that: If a member is off, for any reason, we ‘hire’ back somebody (from a pool of active employees off-duty that day). Whether they come voluntarily or we force-hire them, we staff it every single day, 24 hours a day,” Mr. Sellers said.
Meaning of Overtime
“We do that because it’s our choice. That is what creates the constant staffing and the $1.5 million (in annual overtime) to do that.
“Technically, overtime for us is when we hire extra people, above and beyond the 18, whether they be on-duty or off-duty. So we might hire somebody to go to a particular training class. That person will come back and train the rest of the department.
“We will hire them, send them to the class. When the President was here at Sony Studios, we had to provide an additional ambulance over there, above and beyond what we normally do that will be dedicated to that event for that Presidential visit.
“We do something like that just a few times a year for special events.”
In recent years, the fire chief noted, the department’s discretionary overtime costs for these kinds of occasions have ranged from a low to $3,450 a year to a high of $15,840. He explained that those costs are rooted “in decisions like the weather, what is going on in the community, those kinds of considerations.”
By then, Mr. Sellers was prepared to turn to the main reason for this community discussion of a mysterious and virtually unknown aspect of contemporary Fire Dept. life:
How an annual bill of $1.5 million in overtime typically is run up by a fire company that averages 1½ fire calls a week.
(To be continued)
