Thomas Breen pre-pandemic photo
At a fire in Fair Haven.
The Board of Alders vote 29 – 1 transferring $2.9 million towards firefighter overtime — with the sole dissenting voice warning that such a move might hurt the city’s long-term efforts to control a part of the city budget that has been consistently struggled under deficits.
Local legislators took that budget transfer vote Tuesday night during the latest bimonthly full Board of Alders meeting. The virtual meeting was held online via Zoom and YouTube Live.
Alders gave a final OK to an ordinance amendment that transfers $1.9 million from the city budget’s expenditure reserve account and $1 million from the fire suppression salary account towards the fire suppression overtime account.
The vote followed a Finance Committee public hearing during which Fire Chief John Alston described just how uniquely challenging the past 11 months have been for his department, which has worked through a tropical storm, a spike in house fires, a spate of retirements, and a globe-spanning pandemic. He also said at the time that the overtime budget approved for the current fiscal year was never a realistic number.
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Tuesday night’s Board of Alders virtual meeting.
According to the city’s December 2020 monthly financial report, the fire department is currently projecting a $3,331,000 end-of-year deficit in its overtime account.
The current fiscal year’s budget set aside $2,169,000 for firefighter overtime. The latest projections put the likely end-of-fiscal-year fire overtime total at $5,500,000.
The department is also projecting a $1,331,663 surplus in its firefighter salary account for that same time period.
Transferring millions of dollars every fiscal year to cover an over-budget fire overtime account has become something of an annual ritual. As have promises by top City Hall officials to rein in fire and police overtime as one of their main priorities.
Roth: Transfer “Harms The Effort To Control Fire OT”
NHFD chart
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Downtown Alder Abby Roth
The only alder to vote against the budget transfer Tuesday night was Downtown Alder Abby Roth.
She told her colleagues that she opposed the portion of the transfer that would take $1.9 million from the city budget’s $4 million expenditure reserve account and move it towards firefighter overtime.
The Board of Alders included that $4 million line item in this fiscal year’s budget to accommodate “unanticipated Covid-19-related and perhaps other expenses,” she said. “I think it’s premature to approve the transfer of almost half of the $4 million to cover fire overtime expenses when we don’t know what other unexpected costs we’ll have to deal with because of Covid-19 over the next five months.” The current fiscal year ends June 30.
She noted that the city may be able to use $3.1 million it recently received from the federal government via the state to cover part of these projected fire overtime deficit.
She added that a new presidential administration more sympathetic to the financial plights of state and local governments may also provide additional fiscal relief in the months ahead.
Roth also said that she worries that approving the $2.9 million budget transfer “harms the effort to control fire overtime.”
Chief Alston recently brought on a new management and policy analyst to help with financial oversight, she said. The chief promised that the department is about to start using new software to track overtime and vacations by specification, classification, and skillset. And the department just promoted a new assistant chief to oversee the budget.
“Rather than just accept that the fire department will need $2.9 million more in overtime, we should keep the pressure on the department to use the tools and resources it has told us it has started to use to see if it is able to better control these costs,” Roth concluded.
Morrison: “We’re Talking About Lives”
Thomas Breen photo
Alder Jeanette Morrison.
After Roth finished, Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison defended the budget transfer, encouraging her colleagues to vote in favor.
“Our chief, he comes back every year and he asks for this transfer because they don’t have the right amount of people to really be able to bring that budget down right at this second in order to keep our residents safe,” she said.
The December monthly financial report states that, as of Dec. 31, the fire department had 20 vacancies in fire suppression budgeted positions — including 14 vacancies among firefighter/EMT spots — and another 10 vacancies in non-suppression positions — including three vacant budgeted drillmaster spots.
Morrison said that this budget transfer is a critical public safety decision. “We’re talking about lives,” she said. She said that ensuring that the fire department has enough funds to cover overtime means that New Haveners can sleep well at night knowing that, if they’re in trouble and need emergency, life-saving assistance, city firefighters will be able to respond.
“Our residents need to know that when they call 911,” Morrison said, “someone will be there.”
Every year, the fire chief overshoots his budget by millions of dollars because of shoddy, sloppy and unaccountable contract negotiations - and just plain mismanagement. That the BOA rubberstamps these cost overruns and just rolls over like a dog looking for a tummy rub - they merrily spend away. I am quite sure most of these folks don't even read the budget, let alone understand it or are able to have a conversation about it. They just vote - and some of them sit on the Finance Committee. The ignorance associated with this vote and the worthless public hearings - without naming anybody is epic.