We would like to address the negative comments on newsherald.com and other misinformation that is floating around the past few days.

Transporting is not trending away from fire departments to the privates. There have been four departments out of hundreds in Michigan that have privatized. Three by Emergency Managers and one, Taylor, which will be returning back to transporting according to their council soon. The ambulance companies have been taking the contracts to make money, don't believe for a minute its for anything else. In our case the revenue would only be used to offset staffing costs. The departments that cut the service now have ambulances responding with two personnel which results in decreased care. For instance one person performing CPR while the other drives. On the issue of pay, the wages and benefits between the police and fire departments are the same. Every department in the City has taken ten straight years of zero percent wage increases, with reductions in most benefits. The only raises in the ten years have been $1500 dollars for switching to Advanced Life Support in 2004 and recalculating the holiday pay in the police contracts last year of between $600-1000 dollars.The number of holidays was reduced but calculated on twelve hour days instead of eight. The overtime is higher than it has ever been because the number of firefighters is the lowest it has ever been. If you work the same amount of hours as two fire fighters you get paid as two fire fighters its that simple. The Union has pushed to hire and the City has argued it was cheaper to pay overtime. We asked to accept the grant and reduce overtime. The City requested to change it to a retention grant to cover current employees, then turned it down. Chief Murray's pension is also misrepresented. It does not mention that he has contributed over eight percent of his wages for thirty years to pay for a portion of the benefit or that he is ineligible for social security since the City is not required to pay into the system and avoided the payroll tax. The issue of bargaining for gear is also incorrect. The fire fighters contract contains provisions that require certain types of gear, uniforms and safety equipment to fight fires and respond to EMS. It provides staffing, personnel placement and educational requirements that protect our members and the citizens. The last comment comparing the police and fire budget and describing it as disgusted is also misguided. The Fire Department provides seven fire fighters a day 365 days a year (61,320 hours)and the Police Department provides five a day (43,800 hours). Compare the budgets. Obviously it isn't that simple. They are two jobs with completely different needs, demands and schedules. For instance firefighters work an average of 2,668 hours a year per employee working 24 hour shifts on a 50.4 hour workweek without overtime. The police work 2,080 on 12 hour shifts. The fire fighters have been there every time the City has needed help and have given concessions when asked. However the 26 fire fighters and their families or the rest of the City employees cannot cover the City's entire budget deficit alone. We need to look at everything, but we also have a viable plan moving forward and so far the City has been unable to provide one.

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Unlike "Concerned For LP" the information that I presented is not from "city hall insiders" but from my first hand account of the meetings I attended as the President of the Lincoln Park Fire Fighters Association. The concessions that were in the press release were presented and the grant was rejected exactly as I stated. This process has been very disappointing to all of us. If you have followed the story or watched the council meetings you will see that the fire fighters have been working very hard to get the City to take the grant. I spoke at several meetings addressing it specifically. The Council didn't like the way it was written and we worked with our administration and FEMA. We had the grant changed from a grant to hire more fire fighters to a retention grant to maintain fire fighters currently employed. Many of the previous no votes on Council said they would accept it if it had only been written that way. I met with the City Manager, City Labor Attorney, and Finance Director who said that we should accept the grant as amended and would recommend it to Council. We agreed not to talk about it publicly because it had become too political and were ensured several times that it would be accepted. We were told that several days later the City Council met in closed session and decided they would only accept the grant if we agreed to concessions (the grant which was being offered to the City without strings attached now had strings attached for the workers). They wanted us to go to five fire fighters per day and shut down one of the fire trucks. They had no answer as to how they would cover the seven hundred calls this truck makes while the other rigs are already tied up on runs. We opposed the reduction in coverage as a way to accept a staffing grant and agreed at that time to go back to our membership and see if we could come up with other alternatives to the cuts they offered in order to accept the federal funds. We went back and informed our members that we would have to take cuts to take the grant or be faced with possible lay offs.
We met with the City last Thursday and offered our proposal and were informed that they could not accept it at that time and would be turning down the grant.
We had agreed in good faith not to go to the public because we believed the City would do the right thing and they didn't. We think the citizens would have like to have been included in the decision. We wrote the press release to inform the public that the grant had been declined and that the City had been taking steps that would almost certainly ensure staffing reductions and reductions in service that would directly relate to decreased safety for our members and the public. We also made it clear that we did not believe the Council was prepared to examine alternatives to cutting service.

To address the previous posts understanding of fire ground staffing I would like to point out that the four fire fighter standard they mention is also incorrectly applied. The four fire fighters are used in conjunction with OSHA 29 CFR 1910.134 or Two in/ Two out requirement for using self contained breathing apparatus (our airpacks)in an IDLH(Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health) atmosphere such as a structure fire or confined space. In order to operate in a fire with an airpack you are required to be with another fire fighter (two in) and be backed up by two others outside the IDLH(two out). The law also has provisions that exclude fire fighters in key positions from being included in the count such as a fire fighter operating the fire pump or the officer in charge of the incident. It also makes exceptions for fire fighters making rescues without a back up if necessary. The standard is not for overall staffing but for the protection of members of each team assigned inside the fire. For a real standard on fireground safety try the National Fire Protection Association's Staffing and Deployment Standard NFPA 1710 or a study from National Institute of Standards and Technology on how crew size and arrival times has a substantial effect on protecting lives and property at fires. You could also read the recommendations of NIOSH for each fire fighter fatality since they investigate each death and make recommendations of how they could be avoided including staffing recommendations. If you don't think there are enough fires to justify the manpower than you may want to consider car accidents, power lines falling, gas leaks, carbon monoxide exposures, or the mix of close to six thousand runs that we run here in Lincoln Parks only fire station. Some of those do include false alarms, runny noses, the elderly that have fallen and need help up. It also includes thousands of real emergencies with real people expecting help. But what would fire fighters know?

I could write similar paragraphs about several of the other points that have been raised but will try to refrain. Without trying to insult anyone I would ask that in important debates and arguments about issues that are as important as these that you at least explore the arguments and understand that nothing was done in a bubble. In most cases these issues have been argued and were agreed to by both parties, not because they really liked it but because it was the best choice they had, as in the case of having the fie chief in the union. The City offered this in the last contract to ensure that the individual that accepted the job would be covered by a contract. The previous chief's contract had been eliminated after the police department hired back the police chief that had retired. The previous City Manager and Council believed that this member would be capable of putting his/ or her job of protecting the lives of the public before their allegiance to the union. They also understood that the "union" and its members had invested in the community, were active with local charities and organizations,provided training to its fire fighters and had dedicated their lives to protecting the City. They also understood that fire fighters have a different work environment, schedule, a command structure than most professions and are covered by different laws to support those differences. In the case of the fire chief being a union member the Michigan Public Employee Relations Act 336 of 1947 under part 423.213 section 13 allows fire chiefs "subordinate to a fire commission, fire commissioner, safety director, or other similar administrative agency or administrator" to be in a union. Once again the City proposed this option not the union.

The "disgusting budget" desparity mentioned (2011 actual) LPPD $8,014,449 with 50-55 employees and the LPFD $4,162,964 with 26-28 employees. The 2012 budget will be very close with changes in the FD overtime budget increasing and the salary costs decreasing. Less employees more overtime with similar overall totals.