Anchorage Fire Department officials and union clash over attempt to curb overtime

Though they recently announced a compromise labor contract that saved the city money, Anchorage Fire Department officials are now clashing with the firefighters union over reducing overtime by cutting hours of a South Anchorage water truck.

Mike Stumbaugh, president of International Association of Firefighters Local 1264, said his members gave up future raises in a recently renegotiated contract with the understanding it would prevent cuts. With the water truck in only partial service, Stumbaugh said he was worried about delays if a fire erupted on the Hillside, and he accused fire department officials of mismanaging the budget.

Fire Chief Denis LeBlanc and Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said the intermittent shutdown of the water truck, which is like a portable fire hydrant, would have happened either way. Budgets were already tight, and the failure of a bond in April didn't help when it comes to meeting Anchorage's demand for emergency medical services without burning up overtime, they said.

City ambulances made about 5,000 more runs to the hospital last year than in 2010, the last time a new ambulance went into service. The increase in hospital runs is about 40 percent in that time.

The back-and-forth illustrates the problems that officials have when they try to balance community safety without, as often happens, overspending the budget.

In an interview Wednesday, Berkowitz blamed tight staffing at the fire department on the state's failure to pass a capital budget and long-term fiscal plan.

"Because the state has not gotten its act together, our choices are between bad and worse, in terms of the decisions we make," Berkowitz said.

Asked whether he planned to cut elsewhere in the budget to come up with the money, Berkowitz said: "I think a city is more than the sum of its budget. There's ongoing responsibilities to public safety that are paramount."

[Swelling summer overtime is busting the fire department budget]

The city has not expanded its ambulance fleet since 2010, but officials say expansion has become increasingly necessary. More heart attacks and strokes in an aging population, on top of flare-ups with drugs and other substances, have driven the rise in calls, according to an April 2016 presentation created by a fire department committee examining the issue.

Berkowitz and fire officials had been confident voters would support a bond in the April 4 city election that would have paid for two additional ambulances, expanding the fleet from nine to 11 at a cost of $650,000.

But a week before the election, a critical radio ad endorsed by four former Anchorage mayors — Rick Mystrom, Dan Sullivan, Tom Fink and George Wuerch, all Republicans — questioned the expense and transparency of the measure. On election day, every other city bond passed except the so-called "ambulance bond."

The bond would have come with annual operating expenses of $2.3 million, which included the salaries and benefits for 14 paramedic firefighters. The Mystrom, Wuerch and Sullivan administrations oversaw similarly structured public safety bonds, most recently under Sullivan, in 2010. But the mayors and the main sponsors of the ad, Dan Coffey and Bob Griffin, argued that Berkowitz's price tag was outsized and the economic timing was poor.

The fire department spent $139,000 on testing recruits and making conditional job offers to 30 new firefighters. Officials were counting on the passage of the bond in April to pay for about half of those jobs, assigned to the new ambulances.

But now, the recruits are in limbo, with no guarantees of positions in a future academy, LeBlanc said. Stumbaugh, the union head, said fire officials placed too much confidence in the passage of the bond and should not have spent the money on testing.

Last year, the Berkowitz administration and fire officials brought two ambulances out of reserve to meet the demand for emergency medical calls. The union agreed to reduce staffing on fire engines for a year to avoid running up overtime expenses, an agreement that expired in April but would take effect again in July with a new contract.

Dozens of overdoses of the synthetic drug Spice nearly two years ago cast the problem in sharp relief, LeBlanc said.

"We realized the Spice event became a triggering event," LeBlanc said. "It brought attention to the creep that had occurred."

The city's Budget Advisory Commission recently passed a resolution to explore whether it's possible to privatize ambulance services in Anchorage, though the idea has been greeted with serious doubt by LeBlanc and other officials.

In looking at short-term ways to cut overtime, LeBlanc said he examined what he called the "least impactful" options. That's so far included reassigning a training officer, promoting some engineers early and closing the South Anchorage water truck on an intermittent basis.

The water truck, a pumper that gets called out to large fires and holds water when hydrants aren't available, belongs to Station 9 in South Anchorage. One engineer works on the rig.

Starting June 19, on any given day, that engineer has filled gaps in the system that would otherwise require overtime. Over summer, with a busy vacation calendar, that's more often than not, Stumbaugh said. The water truck sits at the station.

The shift provoked a sharp response from the union. In a statement last week, the union said the fire chief had personally assured employees that the money given up in raises would be used to keep equipment in service.

"Unfortunately, now that our employees passed the new bargaining agreement, it appears that the Department and Administration have decided to go back on their word and begin closing fire apparatus on a daily basis," the statement said.

The union approached Berkowitz and city manager Mike Abbott in February about opening up contract negotiations a year early. The idea was to save the city money, Stumbaugh said.

Berkowitz said he, Abbott and the union agreed to a general outline of the talks before the April 4 election. The formal negotiations began on April 27. But Berkowitz, who wasn't involved personally in the negotiations, said the new contract wasn't directly related to the decision to shut down the water truck and would have happened either way.

LeBlanc said he isn't sure right now where the money will come from to boost the number of firefighters. Abbott, the city manager, said those questions are being factored into next year's city budget, which will be presented in September.