Chief Details NHFD Changes

A plan to remove Engine 9 from the Ellsworth Avenue firehouse is dead, but the new fire chief has other plans to beef up the department’s response to medical calls, restructure its organization, and save the city money.

Six months into his first year at the helm of the New Haven Fire Department, Chief John Alston Jr. laid out those plans as he defended his first proposed budget. He did so during this past Thursday night the fourth round of Board of Alders Finance Committee budget workshops at City Hall. Alston also laid out his vision for taking the city’s 155-year-old fire service from good to ​“world class.”

The Harp Administration has proposed a $554.5 million operational budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Alston presented a proposed departmental budget of nearly $33 million, which includes capital and special funds.

The department’s proposed operating budget is 3 percent more than the current year’s, Alston told alders.

“When I came, I asked that the budget remain the same, or as close to the same, because we wanted to do staffing changes and schedule changes to reduce the budget,” he said. The increase in the budget is driven by contractual increases and new hires moving up the pay scale.

Other planned reductions are bearing fruit, Alston reported. Through cooperation with the fire union, the department has been a significant reduction in sick leave and overtime, which before the chief was hired maxed out at as much as $75,000 a week. He said that through budget neutral negotiations with the Local 825, within his first three months as chief, overtime dropped to $55,000 a week. It has since dropped to an average of $35,000 a week, with a spike to $55,000 during the recent holidays and testing. The proposed overtime budget for fiscal 2017 – 2018 is $1.9 million, or about $35,942 a week.

“We’ve seen a nearly 35 percent reduction in overtime, and sick leave is at the lowest that it has been in quite some time,” he said. ​“We only have three long-term, non-service related injured firefighters — actually one went back to work last week, so we only have two. And four who are [on leave] with service connected injuries.”

Recent promotions will help further reduce overtime, he promised. When Alston took over in October, all seven of the top positions in the department were vacant. A recent promotion has filled the following ranks: an assistant chief, three deputy chiefs, four battalion chiefs, 12 captains and 13 lieutenants.

Alston told alders that the department is currently understaffed by about 15 to 18 firefighters. With Friday’s promotion of 13 lieutenants, that vacancy will grow to 31. But those promotions are significant, because they help reduce overtime. His plan for filling those vacancies includes hiring 35 firefighters this year. Recruitment is underway.

The department is using a combination of social media — rather than using firefighters on overtime — to reach people and holding in-person orientation meetings to establish a pool of eligible candidates. He said hiring new firefighters is helpful for reducing overtime, because first-year firefighters are paid a lower starting salary, and they’re paid in straight time instead of time and a half. He said his goal is to push more of the overtime work into those lower ranks.

“Many times in the lay world when you say a firefighter or an officer got promoted, it appears like a reward,” he said. ​“It’s not a reward. In our business staffing is important due to the span of control, the size of the equipment, the responses that we respond to, and the number of people that we supervise.

“With those fire officers moving up, what it does is we’re not paying acting time, we’re not paying overtime for those initial vacancies that I spoke of when I started so that we move away from the Garcia Act, where we were making large payments for firefighters exceeding the 212 hour measure for paying a Garcia payment on top of their regular salary,” he added.

The ​“Garcia payment” — named so because of a U.S. Supreme Court case — kicks in for firefighters who exceed 212 hours in a 28-day period, which works out roughly to about a 53-hour work week. At that point, a firefighter is paid at time and a half. The chief said by keeping positions staffed and maintaining an active promotion list, he can’t eliminate Garcia payments, but he can reduce them drastically.

Moving People, Not Removing Equipment

Annex Alder Al Paolillio had a question: That proposal from the Harp Administration to remove Engine 9 and replace it with a smaller paramedic unit … It DOA, or what?

“Right now all firehouse, all engine companies are where they are and they’re going to stay where they are, yes?” Paolillo asked.

“Yes,” Alston said.

Just before he was hired, the Harp administration said removing Engine 9 would save time and lives by being replaced by a new ambulance unit ; the union vehemently disagreed and staged a community demonstration. Alston told alders at his confirmation hearing back in September that he needed time to evaluate the city’s incident data before he took a side. But he had acknowledged then that most fire service has become emergency medical response.

Having taken the time to evaluate that data and the department as a whole, he told alders has concluded there is a way to accomplish both sides’ goals: to keep existing units in place but also to vastly increase the medical response capability for the city and still save money.

With the new fire contract — the current one expires June 2018 — Alston is looking to add a third paramedic unit at the Dixwell Station. He said the apparatus is already at that fire house, and the department received authorization from the state about two weeks ago for the drugs that must be kept on that equipment, but otherwise the unit is ready for dispatch. Now after Friday’s promotion the department will be able to staff it after some ​“equalization” to make sure that the minimum 72 firefighters per shift for each of the four shifts are all in the right place, he said.

“That makes me happy knowing we’re safe,” said Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison. ​“There was a recent incident near my house, and I would have sworn that the fire truck must have been in the incident because by the time I looked up they were there — well before everyone else showed up.”

“They are one of the busiest houses,” Alston said. ​“They were on my radar before I got here. I’d been studying them.”

“I’m glad that proposal went up in flames frankly,” Paolillo said of the Engine 9 plan.

Alston did say, however, that down the line there might be a need to build a new firehouse and consolidate units because of the amount of ongoing repair needed for the upkeep. He did not say specifically which firehouses are in question, but noted that some are single houses, built back when the fire department still used horse drawn carriages to carry equipment.

More Changes Coming

To avoid having too many firefighters of the same specialty on one particular shift, Alston said, the department was able to extend the work hours from 24 hours to 38 hours through a memorandum of understanding with Local 825.

“I know that sounds strange to a layperson, but our work shifts are three, 10-hour days,” he said. That means that there is more flexibility for firefighters to cover each other’s shifts without a whole lot of additional overtime.”

He said adding a third paramedic unit to the city can keep the engines exactly where there are. But the way to further increase the city’s medical response is by making all trucks equipped for that response. The chief said he is ​“concerned and disappointed” that the truck companies do not handle medical responses. He said that means that there could be a medical incident near a firehouse, but if the engine and the emergency unit from that house are on another call, the engine from another house will have to come rather than the truck, which is still sitting at the nearby firehouse.

“That’s unacceptable to me where the truck stays there,” he said. ​“But again, that is contractual. We’ve had great conversations, Local 825 and myself, and going forward we’re not going to be waiting for the contract. We may be looking at an early staffing agreement to talk about how we can get the trucks to do medical responses.”

He said prior to his arrival, the trucks didn’t even carry automatic external defibrillators (AEDs).

“They carried oxygen, but they didn’t carry AEDs,” he said. ​“I’ve had the unfortunate experience to be at a fire with a firefighter who was having a heart attack. Fortunately we had an AED. Even considering the public’s need for a truck to carry that equipment, a firefighter could be having distress in the firehouse and you would still have to call someone to bring an AED. We’ve changed that.”

He said staffing trucks so that they can conduct medical responses, rather than waiting for an engine company, or a paramedic unit to respond would have to be negotiated with the union because that would be a change in work. But he also said that adding the third paramedic unit is budget neutral, and well needed because the department’s two existing units perform over 7,000 runs each.

“That’s just too much,” he said. ​“We’ve got to divide that work load before someone gets hurt.”

“Because we do have paramedics, once they’re promoted to captain they do not do paramedic work because of where they’re working and because of the promotion,” he told alders. ​“By adding paramedic wagons — and that takes a while because you have to go through the state — you have to get permission for the pharmaceuticals, they have to receive medical control, and that’s a long process.

“But in terms of losing engine companies, I don’t want to lose any apparatus,” Alston added. ​“I will re-appropriate people.”

In addition to the paramedic unit, Alston wants the department to have a special operations branch. He said he’s learned in his short six months that the department has a number of firefighters with special skills in areas such as HAZMAT, rescue and marine. But he said to keep them coordinated, trained and ready to deploy, they need their own division.

“Now, before you become a branch, you have to generate those types of runs and data,” the former Jersey City deputy chief of special operations said. ​“So we will start small.”

He said the goal of any staffing agreement would be to allow the shifting of firefighters from one specialty group into a larger special operations group to cover those disciplines. He said it will allow the department more efficiency and ensure that people with special skills don’t all go on vacation, or to the same training at the same time. Alston said it also allows the department to achieve a minimum staffing of qualified special operations firefighters at all times.

Other interesting updates include the fact that moves are being made to staff the assistant chief of administration, which is the second highest position in the department. Alders impressed upon the chief, again, how much they want that person to be local.

He said applications were back and a committee was in the process of scoring them. He expects three to five finalists and wants to make a selection no later than the end of May. The chief has got his sights set on other changes to the fire contract that he thinks are necessary to get the department in top shape including one that firefighters might not like, and could have an impact on retirements.

“I’m looking at making some changes in the contract, and I’m quite sure some people aren’t going to be happy,” he said. ​“I anticipate them leaving that year [when the contract expires]. Currently, they are able to average their four best years and they count over time in their retirement calculation. That’s something I’m looking to remove. It’s not the national standard, and I, as a firefighter, if it were me, I would not be happy. I made what I can make, I’m going to leave. If they stuck around, technically they would be losing money. “

“I’m looking to move our fire department to a world class fire department,” Alston added. ​“We already have it physically by the firefighters because of their attitude and their skill set. We just need to give them the equipment and the training to get to the next level.”