City, firefighter union reach accord; police lobby to remain open around the clock
Updated 12:08 p.m.
CHAMPAIGN — Deputy Chief Troy Daniels said today that city officials decided the police department's lobby could remain open to the public for 24 hours per day with minimal disruption to the front desk employees' other duties, even with a skeleton staff.
The topic has been a key issue for nearly a year as city administrators looked to trim money from a tight budget and union leaders looked to protect their employees. Others were concerned about the police station's front doors, which officials had said would be locked for 12 hours every night if staff at the front desk were cut.
"At that time, we estimated or believed that we would need to shut the doors from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. due to the reduction in staffing," Daniels said. "The two workers that were going to be laid off because of this left employment with our department last summer, so we have lived in these conditions with seven workers for the past six months, so we were able to determine what the impacts of that would be."
Ultimately, he said, the disruption to the front desk staff's other duties, which include monitoring police radio traffic and relaying information to officers on the street, was outweighed by the benefit of keeping the lobby open around the clock.
"It's just not a service that we want to give up," Daniels said.
The staffing reduction will still happen, and the move is expected to save the city $140,000 annually. Instead of two employees working the front desk staff at night, often only one will be scheduled. While that one front desk staffer is away on breaks, a police officer will have to cover those duties.
Those officers will be unavailable for their typical duties while they are covering the front desk for 20 to 70 minutes, roughly eight times per week.
"Certainly, we would prefer not to have to use an officer to cover breaks," Daniels said, but that is the effect of a $140,000 budget cut.
Updated 10:41 a.m. with this news release issued by the city:
Champaign Police Department Lobby to Remain Open to the Public
Initial proposals to close the lobby to the public, during evening and overnight hours, were submitted in response to the City’s plan to address a funding gap projected in the Five Year Forecast. However, for the last six months, police administration reexamined the impact of reduced staffing and concluded that the workload generated during these hours is not a significant enough factor to take this course of action.
Therefore, the Champaign Police Department’s lobby hours will remain open to the public 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
A decision was made to allow the lobby to remain open for business, but with the assistance of police personnel. Champaign police officers and supervisors will relieve staff working at the front desk during breaks and short absences when needed.
Police department personnel will continue to respond to telephone calls from the public and internal staff. However, the public should continue calling "9-1-1" in emergency situations and (217) 333-8911 for non-emergency calls for police service. For general police information, calls can still be placed to the police department at (217) 351-4545.
Updated 8:25 a.m. Wednesday with this news release issued by the city:
CFD Station Four Engine Company Will Continue to Respond
The City of Champaign and Champaign Firefighters Local 1260 have reached an 18-month side-agreement averting the necessity to shutdown the engine company at Station Four, 2315 W. John Street. Champaign City Council will take formal action on the agreement at its next meeting.
“It was a shared sacrifice,” said Fire Chief Doug Forsman, “with the union giving wages and time concessions while the City agreed to provide funding for the current level of service for the next 18 months.”
IAFF Local 1260 President, Chris Zaremba said, "I am proud to say our members came together and voted in favor of an agreement whereby each member will work forty-eight hours of furlough time in addition to making wage concessions in the final year of our bargaining agreement. In doing so, our members once again demonstrated our commitment to providing the citizens of Champaign with the level of service they deserve and have come to expect."
The union is providing 55% of the funding through wage and time concessions in a side-letter agreement that will run until June 30, 2013. The cost to keep St-4’s Engine Company fully functioning for the next 18 months is approximately $650,000.
This agreement will allow CFD to continue to utilize the full complement of six engine companies, two ladder companies, one rescue company, and one incident commander. Nine fire companies will be available.
“Clearly both the City and the Union are pleased to have reached an agreement. Our goal has always been to maintain the highest level of public safety response assuring minimal impact on the community while recognizing the difficult budget decisions which has been necessary,” said Forsman. “Both parties worked very hard to make this possible.”
Forsman remains hopeful that at the end of the 18 months economic conditions are such that the current level of service can continue to be provided.
CHAMPAIGN — A flurry of deadlines and extensions have come and gone in recent weeks, but as of Tuesday, two key public safety budget cuts at Fire Station 4 and at the police department front desk were still pending as city officials work out the details with unions and employees.
Fire engine No. 154 on the city's west side remains in full service while administrators try to work a deal with the fire union. Officials said the engine company would be "browned out" on Jan. 1 before extending the deadline for two weeks to spend more time in negotiations with union representatives.
Reducing firefighter overtime ultimately would leave the engine unavailable to respond to emergency calls about 75 percent of the time, but it would save $400,000 annually in a struggling city budget.
Union president Chris Zaremba said on Tuesday that city administrators have essentially issued an indefinite extension on browning out the fire engine as long as the two parties continue to negotiate in good faith.
Zaremba said that firefighters are now considering a concessions package that would keep the engine in full service. If the union approves of the deal, it would go to city officials for their approval.
At the police department, Deputy Chief Troy Daniels said a public announcement on the fate of the lobby and front desk was being prepared for release by Wednesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon, he declined to comment on the details.
But in an email last week to police department employees, he said police officers would be tapped to fill in for a strained front desk staff.
In the email, Daniels told employees that they made the front desk staff's importance clear to city administrators.
An important point for those who are critical of the $140,000 budget cut at the police front desk is that reducing staff there would mean the department would have to lock its doors every night from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Police employees have spent the past few weeks preparing to implement the budget cut that first came before the city council early last year.
For months, seven staffers have been covering shifts at the police department's front desk that had been handled by nine employees. The duties of the position, among others, are to monitor police radio traffic and relay information to officers on the street. They also are the first point of contact for citizens who walk into the police department looking for any kind of assistance.
City officials said the budget cut would drop staffing levels at the front desk to a bare minimum at night.
It has become necessary to use sworn police officers and sergeants to relieve front desk staff during breaks and temporary absences, Daniels wrote in the email. Those relief periods could last anywhere between 20 and 70 minutes.
I am fully convinced that the best option for the community would be to implement a combination fire department made up of BOTH paid full-time firefighters and paid-per call volunteers. Here is why:
Volunteer departments in many large, mid-sized, and small towns provide quality and timely fire protection at a fraction of the cost of our cities expansive operation. How many people live or work within a couple of minutes of a Champaign fire station? Hundreds. Men and women who live and work near a station could take, and be paid to have the basic training it takes to become a firefighter and respond only as needed for responses in which the smaller full time crews need additional manpower, such as a major fire.
On the rare major incidents, the paid crews would arrive on scene just before the volunteers and establish the initial command and attack plan while the volunteer firefighters arrive shortly thereafter. For the majority of the calls CFD runs (motor vehicle accidents, medical calls, automated fire alarms) volunteers would not be necessary, because a few full time FF's could manage, yet have the resource of dozens, or even hundreds of volunteers, ready to back them up at a moment's notice
The fire service is a very competitive career to get into, and rightly so--it's an overpaid nicety which is adequately provided by eager volunteers in many parts of the country. Consider the efficiency of what is termed a "combination department". A few full timers to manage the routine majority, with the immediate assistance of the backbone of America's fire response--volunteers--only a moment's notice away on a major fire.
Before reading my post, I want to make it clear that I have NOTHING against volunteer firefighters; as a matter of fact I was a volunteer FF myself for several years before time constraints prevented me from devoting as much time and energy as my neighbors deserved. I have a tremendous amount of gratitude and respect for our local volunteers. I should also point out that I am not a member of any paid fire department either. I’m just a Champaign resident who wants to express his opinion on the above post.
EMT, you have an interesting perspective and it’s one that suggests that you are a volunteer firefighter. If so, thank you for your time and service to your community. However, it also suggests that you aren’t familiar with, don’t understand, and/or fail to acknowledge the serious challenges that face the volunteer fire service. Both locally and nationally there are numerous issues that plague volunteer-based agencies.
First and foremost is the availability of the volunteers. This can be seen at many of the departments right here in Champaign County, and it’s mirrored all across the US. Volunteer fire personnel are just that, volunteer. Even a “paid-on-call” or “paid-per-call” firefighter typically has to maintain a full-time job somewhere else to support him/herself.
For most people, a full-time job means working all day during the week and many people are working more hours for less money in this economy. This leaves very few people to help in a day-time emergency (i.e. the Green Street fire last summer). Many employers, mine included, are not willing to allow their employees to leave at the drop of a hat when their pager sounds. Additionally, firefighting requires a significant amount of training and conditioning. This requires additional time out of a volunteer’s schedule than just running calls. Most volunteer departments in Champaign County have training for a few hours every Monday evening, detracting from family time for many- or interfering with non-traditional or service-industry job schedules. (Full-time Champaign and Urbana firefighters devote a few hours of every shift training, allowing for more frequent training.) Someone with a full-time job as a banker can’t devote as much time or energy to fire-service education and training as someone who is paid to focus solely on the fire service.
According to the NFPA’s 2010 US fire department profile, the number of willing volunteers has dropped more than 5% since 2009. This drop in willing-volunteers has been on the steady decline for several years now. (The NFPA is the association that issues best-practice directives that fire departments must follow.) According to that profile, the volunteers that are remaining are older than they have been in the past, leading one to believe that there are fewer young people interested or able to get involved in the volunteer fire service.
If you’re indeed a local volunteer, do you ever listen to your pager in the “open” mode (or if not, listen to the METCAD fire dispatch channel on a scanner?) If so, you’ll know how often the volunteer departments are re-toned. If you’re unfamiliar, a “re-tone” is when the dispatcher has to send out a second page to summon firefighters to an emergency. At METCAD, their telecommunicators have a timer that starts at the time of dispatch. They re-tone an agency if they haven’t heard from any department members within 3 minutes of the initial dispatch. While 3 minutes does not seem like a lot of time, one must look at it in context.
Consider the following scenario: A “regular” response is initiated for a smoke situation at a grocery store on North Prospect. This requires the dispatch of several fire companies to investigate and mitigate. 10 minutes later, on the southwest side of town a wife hears a thud and walks into the living room to find her husband unconscious and not breathing. She has no idea that there’s a situation at a grocery store, nor should it be a concern for her. She runs to the telephone and dials 9-1-1 to summon help. The dispatcher answers on the first ring and immediately ascertains the location of the emergency and nature. They enter a ticket for dispatch in under 30 seconds. The fire dispatcher immediately opens the ticket and dispatches the fire department, which for an experienced dispatcher takes approximately 30 seconds. It takes 3 minutes for the firefighter to travel from his home to the station. It takes 4 minutes to get to the house from the station. (NFPA standard 1710 requires the first-due company arrive on-scene of >90% of their calls in less than 240-seconds.) City requirements dictate that an ambulance should arrive within 7 minutes of the call on >90% of medical calls, so they’re pulling up right behind the fire-engine. (Typically, fewer ambulances run more calls, so they may be coming from the hospital after just dropping off their last patient.) By the time the firefighters get out of the truck, grab their equipment and arrive at the patient’s side it’s highly likely another minute has passed. We’re now passing at 8-minutes of down time, and while the 9-1-1 dispatcher is trying very hard to instruct the wife in CPR, she proves to be in too much of a hysterical panic to render any aid (which is quite often the case as any 9-1-1 dispatcher can tell you). According to the American Heart Association, the brain tissue begins to die after 6 minutes without oxygen and CPR wasn’t started until 8 minutes. Brain death is irreversible. With a full-time paid crew in quarters you can knock at least 3 minutes off of the response time, potentially preventing permanent brain damage and significantly improving the patient’s chance of survival.
Replace the above cardiac-arrest scenario with a structure fire in a large building like an apartment complex. Using the Fire Equipment Manufacturer’s Association rule of thumb, a fire doubles in size every minute. What may started as a knocked over candle could turn into a room-and-contents fire before the volunteer truck even leaves the station. By the time the first unit is on scene it could have flashed over and become a fully-involved structure fire.
3 of the 4 “collar” departments, which are the departments closest to the C-U corporate limits are facing serious issues attracting and maintaining an adequate cadre of volunteers. These are the departments who accept volunteers who live inside the city limits- and as you say, there are hundreds of the people living and working within a few minutes of these stations, yet they’re still facing shortages.
There are dozens of other reasons why a “mixed” department would not be practical here, but it’s late and I’m tired. You can find those with a simple “problems facing volunteer firefighting” search on Google if you wish.
While an interesting concept, it is not practical to take an efficient and highly effective service like Champaign or Urbana, which provides a 100% reliable, highly-trained (and specially trained- regional haz-mat and technical rescue teams) and focused individuals and replace it with a potentially functional, but inherently problematic service-model. While cost-effective and practical for a rural area, it’s not in the best interest of a more urban environment such as Champaign or Urbana.
First, thanks to "yeahokay" for his/her very informed post. They are somebody that obviously understands the in's and out's of the entire situation. It is very easy to post how "costly" Professional Firefighters are, but you are simply in denial if you feel that you can argue a volunteer or combination department could provide a remotely similar level of service, training and response time. "EMT" has shown through numerous posts that he/she is a volunteer firefighter with a bone to pick with the career fire departments. Volunteer firefighters are an essential part of most communities. These are smaller comunities without the resources to fund a full time department. Through EMT's argument, he/she is stating that if accused of a crime he/she didn't commit that he/she would run to the first low-cost "public defender" that he could find. We all know this isn't the case. Why? Because most of us realize that you get what you pay for. EMT would go and find the best lawyer he could....and this is going to cost more money...but your life depends on it. So you are going to get the best lawyer you can afford. The cities of Champaign and Urbana have decided that their citizens want and deserve the highest level of fire, medical, and rescue services....the kind that, yes, will cost a little more. But, you get what you pay for. After listening, just yesterday, to a local volunteer department get "toned out" three times for a possible chiminey fire, proves my point. That level of service is not acceptable for the cities of Champaign or Urbana. I could go on and on about how much 3-4 minute response times vs. 8-12 minute response times mean when you are not breathing, or when a fire is growing....but all you have to do is hold your breath, or knock over a candle and you will understand that one very quickly.
This should never become a bashing forum of volunteer vs. career firefighters, however, if you refuse to acknowledge the large difference in so many aspects of the two...then you are just not being honest.
Volunteer organizations might work well in rural locales that are characterized by discrete buildings, such as farm barns. But in cities where the buildings are often side-by-side, a fire can get out of hand very quickly.
There's also the chain of command. Imagine having a volunteer militia fighting side-by-side the US Army. Chaos. (As we've seen.)
Finally, there's the cost. Many think going to volunteers will help cut taxes. Perhaps. But homeowners and business insurance will rise accordingly. There's no free meal here.
It is great that we can have a friendly debate and hear everyone's ideas on how to save money while still saying within budget. I think we could save a lot of money by asking the Champaign Fire Union to ask it's members to stop being lazy and treat the citizens in their city how they should be treated. Also it would be nice if the Champaign Fire Administration would stop trying to pad it's numbers by responding to calls outside the city.
If you monitor the scanner like some of you have mentioned you'll notice that CFD units are slow to respond (especially at night) and if you watch them onscene of a medical you'll see that the majority of firefighters are lazy on medical calls. There are firefighters that refuse to lift patients, refuse to provide basic medical care, and will wait outside a house until the ambulance arrives.
As for how CFD pads it's numbers they are constantly running calls outside the city that they are not asked to respond and are not needed by the fire department having jurisdiction. It would probably be more helpful to respond to calls when asked by other departments and play well with other departments. Other than Urbana no other department will ask for CFD to respond because CFD personnel will not play well with any other department.
I feel that the city needs to be a paid department, but they definately need a make over from the top to the bottom.
What a great discussion. ff907, I think you hit the nail on the head. CFD has some very lazy members on it's department. But there are also some great firefighters on the department. Back in the day people used to look at firefighting as just that, it was a job solely dedicated to fighting fires. Fire departments have spent years trying to obtain credit for the job they do and now they have it. They are labeled as "heros." And rightfully so. The problem is there was a shift in their job where medicals came into play. And now that is a majority of their job. I would guess 70%. With fire safety becoming the forefront of the fire service they run less "fires." They run a lot more medicals. Which brings us to the EMS communities. The EMS communities are not funded by the citizens, at least in Champaign County. They are funded by the private enitities they work for. They have the chance of working along side of many fire deparment personnel and what a drastic difference there is between them. It's dishearting to hear that a paid fire department would be lazy and not feel like helping someone in need is part of their job, especially when you have non-paid, strictly volunteer firefighters, who make no money and show up and bend over backwards. The days of firefighters being just firefighters are over. Medicals are part of your job. And let's face it, if you didn't have those numbers, you wouldn't have as many fire stations or personnel. Is it more important for firefighters to pull a person out of a burning building or to help assist someone who is having a heart attack? In my opinion you can be a hero in both situations, you probably just won't be recognized in the paper for the heart attack. Also the fire departments that were paid wouldn't feel the need to run calls out of their jurisdiction if they weren't trying to get their numbers up. Everyone is worried about budgets now due to the decline in the economy, why purchase fancy equiptment and trucks now? Why not make due with what apparatus you have. I know there is a time and a place for every dollar in a budget and sometimes you need new equiptment, but being frugal in a very unstable economy is better practice. I see the ambulances sitting out on the streets and look in them and see heros. It's not just the fire departments that "saved" your husband/wife, it was the EMT's in back that with the assistance of the fire dept provided treatment and medicine to save his/her life. And even those EMT's aren't looking for recognition, but they deserve it, and so do firefighters and police officers that do their job with the highest integrity. People need to go back the beginning of their fire, EMS, and police career days where it all started, where the excitement was, and remember you are there for whatever duty you may be called upon to do. The citizens of Champaign County rely on it!
My suggestion, you see, was not to eliminate all career firefighters, but to pursue a combination department. I have run EMS alongside full time departments, a few combination departments elsewhere, and with the local vol. departments.
I, if anyone, fully understand call volumes fluctuate throughout the day and night and that the majority of the calls are medicals, it's what I do for a living. I also find think that fire response on EMS calls for conscious and breathing patients rarely affects patient outcomes. We don't need CFD running a large portion of these medical calls. I think it could be done with less firefighters. Why does Champaign have around 30 firefighters on the clock at 3am? Well, I suppose there COULD be a fire, right?
But would the OUTCOME really differ if 12 or 15 firefighters were immediately available to respond (fulltimers) and a larger force of volunteers could be there to back them up at a moment's notice? I'm telling you, there are many eager young people today who would not hesitate to train and serve in that capacity.
I'm just raising the issue that tightening budgets MAY eventually force to become reality. I also think you are GROSSLY underestimating the response you would see if members of the community could train, serve, and possibly even receive a small stipend as some VFD's do.
There are efficiencies to be found in combination departments that cannot be obtained by either a paid-only, or completely volunteer department.
I don't simply mean 2 or 3 paid captains and everyone else is a volunteer. In a town the size of Champaign, it would probably be necessary to have around 12 FF's immediately available 24/7.
But try to keep the financial picture in mind guys...
Explain to the taxpayers why hundreds of eager applicants apply for one or two open firefighter positions? How many of those eager young guys do you think would do your job for 1/2 your wage and still enjoy it?
Keep in mind, that the older I get, the more I see unions losing their favor in the public eye, and the work you do, my friends, may eventualy be provided in a much more cost efficient manner.
I was wondering where you were going with this. Green does not look good on you.
I always shake my head in wonder when working class people turn on others because 'they get paid too much.' The problem is not that firefighters are overpaid, EMT. It's that you are woefully underpaid. Let's have an honest conversation about how much (or how little) paramedics are paid. Let's stop this race to the bottom nonsense.
I could find 100 people working at Wal-mart who would be more than happy to take your job as an emt. They would like the pay increase as well. What does that prove?
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