News

Gloucester: Shut stations have impact on response times by firefighters

By Richard Gaines
Staff writer
Published: July 3, 2008

Last weekend, with the start of St. Peter's Fiesta and the summer's first big weekened, the odds weren't good that it would be a safe one for the public.

In summer, Gloucester's population expands by about 10,000, rising to more than 40,000, not counting day trippers and the motel and bed-and-breakfast crowds.

More people means more problems.

"I just hope no one wraps a car around a tree and puts five people in the hospital," said police Lt. Joseph Aiello last Friday, just as the Fiesta parade was stepping off at dusk.

No accident of that nature occurred.

But at 5:28 Friday evening, a 911 call came in about a person injured at Lane's Cove in Lanesville; and at 10:45, a 25-foot boat carrying revelers crashed on the rocks below Seaside Cemetery just north of Lanesville, sending five people to hospitals.

It took an ambulance with a two-person rescue squad 12 minutes to get to the site of the injury at Lane's Cove from the central station downtown, and it took almost 14 minutes for a pumper, a ladder truck and two ambulances — 10 people overall — to get to the very slippery rocks and surf where the injured boaters were floundering.

If the Bay View station had been open, the double-digit response time would have been reduced dramatically; from the Bay View station, it's two minutes to Lane's Cove and three to the cemetery.

But the station was closed.

The closing can be traced to the city's dire financial situation, triage budgeting priorities of Mayor Carolyn Kirk and the City Council, a firefighters' contract that gives members liberal opportunity to load up on summer vacations, and union members' penchant for taking advantage of their negotiated rights and privileges.

The previous day, with limited grousing, the council OK'd the mayor's budget for fiscal 2009, including a sharply reduced appropriation for firefighter overtime. The amount that was reserved for calling in off-duty staff to compensate for vacations, illnesses, personal days and training was only $200,000.

That's 40 percent of the $500,000 that Chief Barry McKay had asked for a year ago and half of the $400,000 he got from last year's council.

With that $400,000, he had been directed by then-Mayor John Bell to keep all the stations open all the time. It was an impossible assignment.

McKay and the union went through the $400,000 by fall, months ahead of the projected expiration date for the overtime. Chaos ensued when no significant sums were found to supplement overtime.

Without overtime, McKay was unable to build back the roster sufficiently to keep the Magnolia and Bay View stations open.

And when five firefighters stayed out on the night shift of Super Bowl Sunday, even the West Gloucester station was closed, leaving only the crew at central station to protect the city's 26 square miles while the Patriots were losing to the New York Giants.

Since then, staffing absences have forced the city to run the same risk eight more times.

Overshadowing the financial issues is an increasingly hard-edged political dispute or battle of the wills between the mayor and the union.

Union Vice President Phil Bouchie claims Kirk has broken off communications with the union and cut the firefighting overtime budget in a vindictive punishment for the union's refusal to approve a giveback of $25,000 in training money to match a charge to the stabilization fund.

The purpose of the matching contributions was to provide a modicum of overtime money to help keep at least West Gloucester, if not the other two neighborhood fire stations, open through the last months of fiscal year 2008, which ended Monday.

McKay has repeatedly described West Gloucester as the essential second station to central station, making it clear that he considered the closing of West Gloucester after Magnolia and Bay View to be ethically and morally irresponsible.

In an e-mail, the mayor dismissed the claim that she was punishing the union.

"I don't work that way," she said.

Kirk went on to say the reason the Bay View station was closed Friday night was that the union had taken advantage of the "allowable absence" clause in the contract. Although it expired a year ago, the contract remains in effect and governs union-management relations.

It allows two scheduled vacations per shift, but also allows three more members of a squad to call in and stay out for a variety of legitimate reasons — accrued vacation, and three "personal" days that are charged to sick leave.

Kirk did not focus on the "allowable absence" clause as a budget buster until after the union in March refused to go along with the giveback, but since then she has been increasingly insistent that the clause must go.

Negotiations over a new contract have been suspended, and in any event no funding to cover settlements was included in the budget.

Bouchie called it a "paradox" that staffing of ambulance service and fire engines drops in summer just as the population shoots up, causing what he describes as "an increase in emergency calls."

McKay told the Times the "allowable absence" rights of the rank and file means that there would be very few times this summer when enough firefighters appear at roll call to allow Magnolia to be opened, and with only $200,000 in overtime to last until next July, he would not use it to wedge open the station in Magnolia.

He was relieved of the burden of making decisions about Magnolia by the mayor's executive order that Magnolia would remain closed all summer even when staffing is at work to open it.

On the shifts when there is enough staff to open Magnolia, McKay said he would instead add to the two-person teams at West Gloucester and Bay View.

The union and city agreed earlier this year that more staff on apparatus made for more effective responses as a trade-off for the delayed response time that staff consolidation brought about.

McKay said this arrangement should ensure that West Gloucester does not close again, and that Bay View is kept open "most of the time." (It was closed yesterday.)

But McKay was projecting only in very general terms because the size of the force has been reduced by two via a decision by Kirk not to replace two firefighter/EMTs who have been signed by the Cambridge and Melrose forces.

"She took $130,000 in salaries out of the budget," said Bouchie, who argued the only rational response to the summer crush of people is to bolster staffing.

Agreeing, Kirk said, "perhaps during the summer months the union could reduce the number of allowable absences permitted on individual shifts."

"I guess it's impossible to talk about that," said Bouchie, "because she won't return our calls or our e-mails."

In a memo Monday to the City Council, the mayor acknowledged that what she and McKay were attempting was "managing risk" — by putting more staff on fewer pieces of apparatus for more effective use, but at the cost of arriving more slowly to a crisis.

Kirk also announced that the policy would be reviewed at the end of the summer.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.