Deal saves four firefighter jobs

Four more firefighters are expected to be added back to the Spokane city budget for 2005 after union firefighters and city management agreed that the additional staffing was needed for safety reasons.

The City Council on Dec. 13 agreed to increase cable TV fees in part to pay for four other additional firefighters.

The additions mean the department will lose 50 firefighter positions in 2005, an improvement from the 58 positions that would have been cut under Mayor Jim West’s original budget plan last fall.

With eight additional firefighters, Chief Bobby Williams has reportedly agreed to keep the Rescue 1 truck in service next year. Proposed budget cuts had threatened to park the rig on Jan. 1. Two other rigs will be taken out of service, though.

Rescue 1 is a small two-person truck housed at Station No. 1 at Riverside and Browne. It is equipped with extrication gear for auto accidents and extra air bottles to replenish air supplies during large fires. The captain on the rig is deployed as the safety officer at fires and keeps track of firefighters as they come and go from burning buildings. The driver supplies bottled air.

Both jobs are considered critical for safe firefighting, officials said.

Job safety is considered a working condition subject to collective bargaining between the firefighter union and city management.

The Spokane City Council was briefed on the staffing issue Monday during a closed-door executive session, and it will be asked to approve an emergency budget ordinance to increase spending. The council last week approved a $119 million general fund budget that was balanced with major cuts in city staffing.

Three of the additional firefighter jobs, at a cost of $249,000, would be paid for by squeezing money from other general fund fire accounts, including overtime pay, deferred compensation, vacation leave and medical savings. A fourth position – for a captain who would earn $102,000 – would be paid out of the emergency medical fund by taking money out of a vehicle replacement account. The amounts include benefits.

The council is expected to approve the changes Monday.

“I think getting that vehicle back in service has a lot of benefit,” Deputy Mayor Jack Lynch said.

On-duty staffing will drop from 65 firefighters this year to 58 next year, including two battalion chiefs. That is the force that will be deployed for fire and medical calls at the city’s 14 stations 24 hours a day.

West’s original budget proposal would have left 56 on duty at any given time.

Budget cuts had placed city management in a position of needing a contract agreement with the union over the changed working conditions.

Lt. Greg Borg, president of Local 29, said the union could have taken the staffing issue to binding arbitration if the city had been unwilling to make some changes to its staffing budgets.

A compromise was reached when the city agreed to keep Rescue 1 in service by using the four additional firefighter positions approved Dec. 13 along with the four proposed additions slated for approval Monday.

It takes four firefighters to staff one on-duty position because each firefighter works one 24-hour shift and then has three days off. Rescue 1 has two firefighters assigned to it at all hours.

“It wasn’t contentious at all,” Borg said of the agreement. “I think everyone was looking for a solution.”

Borg said the latest fire deployment plan calls for putting paramedics on Rescue 1.

Five other fire trucks with paramedics would be at Station No. 3 at 1713 W. Indiana; No. 4 at 8 S. Adams; No. 11 at 3214 S. Perry; No. 13 at 1118 W. Wellesley; and No. 15 at 2120 E. Wellesley.

The department plans to offer in-house training to increase its number of paramedics so it can have two medics for advanced life support on each of those rigs.