MARY REGAN
WESTFIELD – Fire Chief Mary Regan appeared before the City Council’s Finance Committee last night to request an appropriation to add four new positions to the Fire Department.
Regan submitted a request to transfer $89,258 from the department’s ambulance fund to the department’s operating budget to hire three additional paramedic/firefighters and to create a new deputy chief position for the last three months of the current 2014 fiscal year.
Regan said the new deputy chief would oversee the department’s emergency medical services (EMS) operations.
“The EMS deputy chief position is long overdue,” Regan said. Duties of that post will include training, investigation complaints about the department’s EMS, writing grants and disciplining EMS personnel.
Regan said the new paramedic/firefighter posts would increase the staffing levels of all four groups of the department’s personnel structure.
“Having 18 firefighters per group will significantly reduce overtime,” Regan said.
Overtime in the current FY 14 budget was funded at $370,000, with about $50,000 available for the remaining three months of the fiscal year.
The other advantage of the 18 personnel per group is that the department would have sufficient manpower to fully staff the Little River station. Currently that station is understaffed and either a fire or EMS call empties the station. The 18-person groups would allow the department to have both EMS and engine company personnel available to respond to both types of call.
Regan said the EMS generated $2.3 million last year and anticipates the revenue will increase to over $2.5 in the current fiscal year.
“We’re bringing in more revenue this year than last year, enough revenue to cover the four positions,” Regan said. “We still do a lot of abatements for financial hardship. We abate more than half of the EMS calls.”
Ward 5 Councilor Robert Paul Sr. asked if the department funds health coverage and pensions out of the ambulance funds.
“I think we have to understand what we’re not covering now before we talk about extra,” Paul said.
Firefighter Curt Gezotis suggested that establishing an EMS captain position may be more prudent that a adding a deputy chief. A captain is paid about $20,000 a year less than a deputy chief.
The department currently has five deputy chiefs and nine captains. There are 69 firefighters and paramedics now on the department.
“The union believes it could be done at the captain’s level,” Gezotis said, adding that the job description for the EMS deputy chief post appears “to be favoring one guy” who meets the qualification criterion.
“This position is coming out of the ambulance fund so what happens if in a couple of years that fund is all dried up (is committed to staffing and capital equipment purchases) and we want a new paramedic? It would have to come out of the general fund,” Gezotis said.
Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell asked the Finance Committee if the appropriation request will be brought to the City Council before the end of the current year.
Ward 1 Councilor Christopher Keefe, finance chairman, said that because the current fiscal year is so close to ending, and the time it would take to approve the appropriation, it will most likely “be a (fiscal year 2015) budget item by the time it comes to the floor.”
