Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

The City of Waukegan and the Waukegan International Association of Firefighters Local 473 are in the midst of negotiating a replacement to a three-year contract that expired in April 2018. Part of the negotiations are over whether two of the five stations should always have five people assigned instead of at least three. The department’s Belvidere Road headquarters is manned by nine, while the other two outlying stations each have five.

The union’s advocacy for higher staffing levels is backed by an analysis of three years’ worth of data commissioned by the union, which found the lower staffing levels led to higher response times and higher demands on firefighters.

The implication that the city’s current staffing approach could lead to people dying or being injured led the mayor to ask the city’s lead negotiator to speak during Tuesday’s City Council meeting. The move comes about two weeks after two aldermen said they want to see the city increase how many firefighters are assigned to fire stations in their wards.

Currently the two stations being discussed — Station 2, off McGaw Road near O’Plaine Road and Station 5, off North Green Bay Road near West York House Road — house an ambulance and engine but sometimes only three crew members, enough to operate either unit, but not both.

That means when a call comes in for that station’s area, the crew will take the equipment applicable to the call and go, but if a second call comes in, instead of that same station responding, another station, either in Waukegan or another nearby town, will take the call.

Fire Chief George Bridges added the department shares the conviction that these follow-up incidents should be planned for and that sufficient redundancies should exist to make sure emergency services can be delivered in a timely manner. The fire department has also been supplementing the three employees at those stations with another two through overtime when possible and as long as the department can afford it, Bridges said.

To staff those stations at those levels consistently, the city would need to have 29 firefighters working each shift, up from 25. That could cost as much as $1.8 million for 12 new employees over three shifts. The real cost doesn’t have to be anywhere near the $1.8 million figure, according to the union, who has quoted a figure closer to $300,000.

The city currently budgets for 84 firefighters, and if all those positions were filled, that would work out to 28 firefighters per shift. That is one person shy of the 29 threshold. An increase in the overtime budget would cover the times when firefighters are off because they’re sick, on vacation or receiving training.

thanks Ron

Tags: Fire Chief George Bridges, Waukegan Fire Department, Waukegan International Association of Firefighters Local 473