You can’t rush hires of firefighters, Gilroy elected officials
say
Gilroy – City leaders say their hands are tied when it comes to reining in sky-high overtime costs in Gilroy’s short-staffed fire department.
Overtime paid to Gilroy’s firefighters has surged during the past two years, topping $600,000 in the last fiscal year. If the trend continues through summer, the department will dramatically exceed this year’s overtime budget, spilling over by more than 80 percent.
The short-staffed department has been filling in for five vacant positions, after two firefighters left for San Jose late last year. Mandatory staffing requirements – and safety concerns – mean that leaving the spots vacant isn’t an option.
“Our preference is to fill the position and not pay overtime,” Pinheiro said. “The reality is we’re out there recruiting the best individuals, and that’s not as easy as it might seem. Other elements happen during the year – someone that leaves the department, emergency (absences), etc.”
Such unexpected circumstances caused the fire department to plow through $441,090 in overtime funds – or more than 90 of its budget – just halfway through the fiscal year. If the agency continues at the same pace, that figure would double to more than $880,000 by the end of the fiscal year in June.
That’s an average of $22,054 in overtime earnings for each of Gilroy’s 40 firefighters, who have a minimum salary of $70,000 per year, according to the city’s Web site.
Yet spiraling overtime expenses are not necessarily cause for alarm, said City Administrator Jay Baksa. The department will likely exceed its budgeted overtime, he said, but with five salaries left unpaid, this year’s budget should break even. With benefits and training, a new employee costs roughly 1.5 times as much as an existing employee – the same as another firefighter filling a vacancy at an overtime rate of time-and-a-half.
Vacancies are not the only source of increased overtime, Baksa added. As the fire industry has shifted from dousing flames to rescuing patients, firefighters require more training, for which they receive overtime pay.
Fire Chief Dale Foster said the department has avoided over-working firefighters by balancing overtime with relief positions. He and Baksa offered similar explanations in 2005, when the Dispatch last reported on firefighter overtime. At that time, the budget looked bleak and officials were calling for a five-year hiring freeze and closing the senior and youth centers.
Attempts to staff the Sunrise Station in northwest Gilroy haven’t contributed to the overtime figures, said Baksa. The station is equipped with a fire engine but has often been unable to staff it, leaving the station’s firefighters with a waterless rescue rig. The unexpected departures of two Gilroy firefighters delayed Sunrise’s engine-that-could from rolling into action full time, though Baksa and Foster said the department has been able to staff the engine a few days a week, using relief positions instead of overtime.
Within the department, the firefighters’ union is reviewing who gets offered overtime, and how. Foster said the current systems operates on seniority, and offers overtime only within the same station. Union representatives are working out a more equitable system, he said, and putting together a proposal. The change isn’t expected to affect the amount of fire overtime, Foster added, just who gets it.
The department hopes to end its staffing woes by summer. Nearly a dozen candidates are being screened for summer hiring, said Foster. The new hires will cause an initial bump in overtime, since firefighters already on the roster must fill in for new hires while they attend three- or four-week training sessions.
Councilman Craig Gartman said he feels no rush to hire new employees, especially since Baksa does not predict an impact on the city’s budget.
“It appears we’re making sure that we hire the people that meet our qualifications,” Gartman said. “I do leave that up to the chief and his staff. They ran through the applicants and hired a number of people. I don’t want, just for the sake of having a body, to have us reduce our standards … We’re talking about people who save other people’s lives, and I don’t want to start scrimping when it comes to that.”
