Haverhill firefighters to get reinforcements
HAVERHILL — With taxpayers' money covering increasing overtime costs, Mayor James Fiorentini said the city's firefighters are about to get reinforcements.
Fiorentini said he expects to hire between one and four firefighters by the end of the month to bolster a department down 10 men and blowing through overtime cash as a result. Seven applicants are scheduled to be interviewed tomorrow, fire Chief Richard Borden said.
Haverhill is down to 85 firefighters out of 95 that are funded in this year's city budget, and no new firefighters have been hired in more than four years. The vacancies are mainly the result of retirements, including at least three since the fall.
Because of the staffing shortage, the Fire Department has overspent its overtime budget for this fiscal year, which ends June 30.
As of this week, the department has spent $1 million in overtime for the department, City Auditor Charles Benevento said.
The city budgeted $854,000 for that overtime account this year, he said.
The department spent $1.6 million on overtime last year and $1.4 million two years ago, Benevento said.
In November, the city received $262,645 in federal stimulus money to hire firefighters.
Some city councilors want to know why it has taken the mayor so long to make the hires, given the overtime spending.
"My information is that it's costing us $17,000 per year in overtime for each firefighter we're down," Councilor David Hall said. "That's $170,000 we can't afford to waste. I've been asking the mayor to do something about this overtime situation for a long time, but it keeps getting worse."
Hall said he and Councilor William Macek plan to bring the matter of Fire Department staffing and overtime spending to the attention of the full council at its next meeting Tuesday.
They want the council's Public Safety Committee to host a meeting early next month with the mayor, fire chief and representatives of the firefighters union to address the situation, Hall said.
Yesterday, Fiorentini gave several reasons for the delay in hiring new firefighters, including the city's uncertain finances and the slow-moving civil service bureaucracy that must be followed when hiring firefighters.
Last year, the city began the process of interviewing firefighters that had been laid off across the state, but that process had to be scuttled when the state provided money for those firefighters to be hired back by their original municipalities.
"I don't want to hire someone and then have to lay them off and have to pay unemployment," the mayor said, referring to the possibility of new state aid cuts caused by the lingering poor economy.
Fiorentini said he expects to have a better sense of next year's state aid when Gov. Deval Patrick unveils his state spending proposal. That could happen as soon as tomorrow, the mayor said.
Meanwhile, Hall said he won't vote for Fiorentini's proposal to add a local tax on restaurant meals until the mayor addresses Fire Department staffing. The mayor is pushing the meals tax, which would generate more than $400,000 annually for the city, according to estimates from Fiorentini.
"The mayor has repeatedly asked us to pass the meals tax, but I'm not going to vote for it until the Fire Department overtime situation gets settled," Hall said. "He needs to do everything he can to save money before we consider a meals tax. The Fire Department overtime is proof he hasn't done that yet."
The city's financial problems also have delayed several promotions in the Fire Department.
"I'll consider the promotions after I see the governor's budget and the impact of the promotions to our city budget," Fiorentini said. "We have already saved money by delaying them (the promotions)."
The new president of the firefighters union, Lt. Greg Roberts, did not return a phone call to comment on this story. This month, Roberts replaced former union President Capt. Paul Weinburgh.
http://www.eagletribune.com/punewshh/local_story_021001341.html?keyword=secondarystory
