Dispute leads to station's closure

NEWBURYPORT — For West End residents, lifesaving relief in an emergency will take three times as long to arrive due to a contract dispute between the city and its firefighters that closed the neighborhood's fire station yesterday.

A sign fashioned from plywood and placed outside the Storey Avenue station yesterday morning read "Fire Station Closed, for Emergencies call 911", offering the latest evidence that contract negotiations ongoing for the past two years between the mayor and firefighters are not going well.

The mayor and firefighters blame each other for the closure, which according to firefighters will triple response times for trucks forced to travel from the Greenleaf Station headquarters to emergency calls in the West End — the city neighborhood near Interstate 95.

"A lot of people are angry at us because they think it's our fault," said firefighter and union negotiator John Perreti. "They're angry because the station is closed."

Perreti and fellow firefighters are pointing the finger squarely at Mayor Donna Holaday for failing to fund a $65,000 shortfall in the department's overtime budget through the end of the fiscal year. And while he admits this year's overtime budget has been extreme compared with other years' budgets, he doesn't feel it's safe to make changes to staff levels because of it. The minimum manning provisions written into the firefighter contract are for the residents' safety, he said.

"They want to have total control over manning," said Perreti, crystallizing what he believes is the sticking point in the ongoing negotiations with the mayor.

Holaday blames firefighters for forcing the closure of the station rather than concede a simple change to their vacation scheduling, which would reduce the department's overtime budget.

Last week, Holaday issued a memo reducing the minimum staffing levels in the department to five personnel, down from the seven minimum mandated in the firefighters' most recent, albeit expired, contract. A normal, full staff has eight firefighters. Holaday did so in order to avoid having to provide the firefighters with an additional $65,000 worth of requested overtime funds to take the department to the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Though Holaday said at the time she did not want to close the West End station, Chief Stephen Cutter told firefighters if more than three firefighters were out for any reason, the new staffing minimum would require its closure to keep an adequate number of staff on each engine.

Three were out yesterday; hence the station was closed. Holaday believes firefighters took the day off on purpose.

"I think they did it on purpose," Holaday said. "I think they called my bluff."

Perreti said yesterday that one firefighter has been at fire training academy, and the other two days off were planned long ago. But the closure, and the giant sign placed at the Storey Avenue station by firefighters, marked a low point in the relationship between the two parties. Holaday directed city employees to remove the sign, but by midmorning, the sign was back up on an adjacent, privately owned lot.

"That sign has to be up because of safe haven laws," Perreti said.

Talks

Holaday said yesterday that she's been trying to negotiate with the firefighters from the time she took office. Their contract expired while former Mayor John Moak was in office. She said she's offered them as part of a new contract the same 2 percent raises offered to other departments, retroactive to July 1, and upped stipend pay for their training, uniforms, and Hazmat training, but she wanted them to concede the minimum manning provisions in order to stem the inflated overtime budgets.

Chief among her requests is that the firefighters put limits on how many firefighters can be "off" per shift. Currently, the contract allows all eight firefighters to be off at the same time, which requires overtime staffers step up to take the place of vacationing or sick workers, she said. Holaday said she's seen as many as five staffers take off the same week.

"They were appropriated $200,000 for 2011," said Holaday. "And we've transferred in a least $70,000 more."

Newburyport firefighters' contract provides that eight people are on staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a minimum of seven firefighters on staff on any given shift, to place three men on each of the city's two pumper trucks and have at least one available to bring the ladder truck to the scene. But if the number goes down to six, the contract stipulates that another firefighter be called to bring the staffing up to seven.

That's a minimum standard that Peretti said is set by the National Fire Protection Association, and it provides for the safety of firefighters and the victims of a fire or emergency.

"If there are two guys on a truck instead of three, only one can provide services," he said.

That means in the event of a fire, there would be only one firefighter available to carry 150 feet of hose into the building or to the site, and in the event of a health emergency, only one person to tend to an accident on the highway. As things are now, the "shot gun" and "rear man" work together on scene while the driver mans the pump, the Jaws of Life, or hook-ups to hydrants.

"It's a three-man operation," said Perreti. "We can't dead-man a truck. How can we provide services if we don't have enough people?"

Holaday said those standards are a goal, but most communities have realized they can't meet them all.

"It's a laudable goal to work toward, but we've got to have the resources to do it," Holaday said.

Perreti said the city's ISO rating, which dictates how much residents pay for insurance, is currently a 3.

"Any changes of any kind would bring it down to a 4 to 5 rating," which he said would raise homeowner insurance rates by about $300 a year, and more for businesses.

Former firefighter and School Committee member Dick Sullivan, who lives in the West End, found the risk of the closed station unacceptable.

"I know from experience, it's a seven-to-eight-minute run from downtown with the lights and sirens going," Sullivan said. "I know that from experience. That station is right up by I-95. There's a lot of accidents up there. There's a lot of businesses that are essentially going unprotected. If grandpa has a heart attack this afternoon, seven to eight minutes can make a lot of difference.

"It bothers me to see this going on," Sullivan said. "It looks like Kopelman and Page (lawyers) are the only ones making out on this one. I wish cooler heads would prevail."

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