Re “$1.5 Million in Overtime, Not Only Justified but Essential” and “Not Everyone at City Hall Is Broke. Fire Dept. Says Thanks a Million and a Half.”
As an experienced administrator of communities from here to Kansas, and in between in Arizona, City Manager John Nachbar looked at yesterday’s report that the Fire Dept. had racked up $1.5 million in overtime in 2010, and he stifled a yawn.
“With benefit costs and pension costs being what they are, it is cheaper for us to pay overtime than it is to bring in additional personnel,” Mr. Nachbar told the newspaper this afternoon.
Yesterday’s story noted that numerous firefighters raised their six-figure salaries by between 30 and 40 percent when overtime pay was factored in.
Does that suggest something is wrong with the system if $$1.5 million is acceptable for a city that is hoping to get a tax initiative passed next month to paper over its $8 million budget deficit?
Mr. Nachbar sighed.
“That is a matter of opinion,” he said. “The city is trying to do it as inexpensively as possible.
“Even though the individual may be benefiting, this still may be the most practical way to do it from an expense standpoint.
“People may resent that it is taking place. But it would not make sense to pay more just to avoid what someone resents.”
It Is Natural
Returning to a central theme, Mr. Nachbar said that “there is significant overtime in public safety.
“It isn’t just fire. Police have their own set of reasons why there is significant overtime in their operations. I don’t care where I have been, what city I have worked for, there always have been significant overtime expenses in the public arena.
“What is driving this issue, all across the country, is the matter of Constant Staffing (an established minimum number of personnel to be aboard department equipment).
“When you combine the minimum number of people on department apparatus with response time,” said the City Manager, “together they drive the whole thing for fire.”
Interpretations of the worthiness of this topic may be reduced to semantics, Mr. Nachbar suggested.
“It is important to understand the concept of Constant Staffing,” which he indicated is a matter of city policy.
Constant Staffing, he said, is heatedly debated in fire circles nationwide. “From their standpoint, it starts with safety. They don’t want to attack a fire without a minimum number of staff.”
Isn’t this a setting ripe for bloating?
“If you didn’t have this requirement,” he said, “a situation came up and certain persons were off that day, you could just reduce the number of apparatus available for one day.
“Or you could roll with fewer people on the apparatus. But fire people don’t want to do that because of the safety issue. I think our requirement is three people. In some departments it is four.”
On a Related Subject
When the thorny subject of a resident-core Financial Advisory Committee comes up at Monday evening’s 7 o’clock City Council meeting, one wit suggested as their first assignment, they could evaluate Constant Staffing.
