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Posts Tagged Fire Chief John Fahy

Overtime payments rise in Elgin

May 17

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from the DailyHerald.com:

Elgin’s fire and police departments spent more in overtime in 2015 than in the previous three and five years, respectively, exceeding their budgets by a combined $700,000. The total for both departments was $4.14 million. City officials attributed that to an unusual combination of factors such as employees retiring and being off work due to injuries and illnesses.

The police department was down seven officers from March to October, Cmdr. Ana Lalley said. After new hires, there were 182 officers by the end of the year. “We’re down $100,000 in overtime so far this year compared to last year,” she said.

Fire Chief John Fahy said the department, which numbers about 130 firefighters, had 15 employees out injured or on extended illness last year. “That includes hip replacements, so you’re off for a long time,” he said. So far in 2016 the department is below budget for overtime, he said.

Other factors are the timing of vacations and calls for service that come in at the end of a shift, Fahy and Lalley said. There is rarely a lack of volunteers, and mandated overtime is extremely rare, they said.

The city adopted a low manning, high overtime model years ago to save on costs, Fahy said.

Elgin Chief Financial Officer Debra Nawrocki said it’s 15 percent less expensive to pay for fire overtime because employees’ costs aren’t just salaries but also pensions and benefits. “That’s the math. The decision is up to others,” she said.

The fire department spent $1.715 million in overtime in 2015, or $315,200 over budget, according to city data. That’s the highest total amount since 2013, after which overtime costs had steadily decreased.

Some overtime costs are built into firefighters’ schedules, Fahy said.

Firefighters work for 24 hours, followed by 48 hours off, and get a Kelly Day, or a day off, every ninth day, Fahy said. That yields a 50-hour workweek, which means 10 hours are paid as overtime. Also, when someone is off on a Kelly Day, someone else has to cover, or equipment has to be taken out of service.

Fire Capt. Hollis Miller worked the most straight overtime last year, or 964 hours, to cover for others being off due to injury and Kelly Days. Like many others, he also earned overtime for training and extra administrative assignments, altogether working 1,322 overtime hours and earning nearly $84,000 over his $121,000 salary.

 thanks Dan

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Elgin FD awards ceremony

Feb 21

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Excerpts from the DailyHerald.com:

From an 11-year-old who alerted his family to a fire to firefighters who performed emergency lifesaving procedures in the field, the Elgin Fire Department’s awards ceremony on Tuesday evening honored dozens.

This was the first such formal ceremony in at least a decade thanks to the efforts of a newly reorganized committee led by Lt. Dan Wagner, Fire Chief John Fahy said.

The committee sifted through hundreds, if not thousands of pages of documents detailing actions by the fire department, which responds to up to 12,000 calls per year, Fahy said and that “Many of the honorees went above and beyond their call of duty. They did that extra thing to make it right.”

Several people got the fire chief’s citizens award, including Nathan Pagnoni, 11, who acted quickly when he discovered a garage fire and alerted his grandmother. “I was really scared,” Nathan recalled. As for the ceremony, “it was really cool to get up there and take photos with the firemen.”

Dawn Stoner of Advocate Sherman Hospital was project manager for a large-scale terrorism training involving 12 fire departments and other agencies at the hospital’s Center Street location.

Father-and-son duo Don Michael Bush and Michael Sean Bush were honored for helping extinguish a kitchen fire in a home across the street and assisting the affected family with a fundraiser.

Nurse Angela Flintz helped use automated external defibrillator pads on a man who lost consciousness during an Elgin Township Triad meeting both were attending. Andrew J. Robinson helped extinguish a fire with a garden hose, while Burlington Coat Factory employees Nohemi C. Farfan and Jasmine Becerra swiftly responded to a fire in a store clothing rack.

Several firefighters were honored with the department’s first Phoenix awards for helping save the lives of patients who were in full cardiorespiratory arrest.

One team took care of a man who had overdosed on heroin while another team helped a man who stopped breathing at a nursing home.

Company awards were given to a team that performed an emergency cricothyrotomy — or surgically opening the throat to insert a breathing tube — on a gunshot victim, and another to firefighters who saved the life of an infant who was choking.

Two Meijer grocery store employees who couldn’t attend the ceremony, Joseph A. Kearns and Sean R. Markwood, were honored for performing CPR and using an automated external defibrillator on someone who went into cardiac arrest.

The department’s active shooter committee and its strategic planning committee got unit citations. Also recognized were 28 department members — out of 133 total — who served in the U.S. military.

thanks Dan

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Elgin firefighters file grievance

Feb 19

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from theDailyHerald.com:

The Elgin firefighters’ union filed a labor complaint against the city after three of its members were told to cut their hair, which they had been growing to protest their 25-month lack of contract.

International Association of Firefighters Local 439 President Vince Rychtanek said he, Vice President Edward Hanson and Shop Steward Joe Villella started letting their hair grow sometime after April 2015 to protest that firefighters have been working without a contract since January 2014. The matter is in arbitration.

The three were ordered recently to cut their hair by their superiors, Rychtanek said, and Villella did so first, followed by Rychtanek and Hanson last week. The unfair labor practice complaint dated Feb. 9 is not about hair length per se, but about the department making grooming policy changes without first bargaining with the union, he said.

“We were all ordered to cut our hair. We’re not going to disobey an order,” Rychtanek said. “Grooming policies, nationwide they are understood to be a mandatory subject of bargaining.”

Fire Chief John Fahy said the department’s policy states members’ personal appearance will be “neat and clean.”

Rychtanek said all three firefighters were ordered to cut their hair, but Fahy said that applied only to Hanson, who didn’t comply when asked to do so by his battalion chief. Villella cut his hair late last year after a former assistant chief talked to him, and Rychtanek did so after being asked by his battalion chief, Fahy said.

“Rychtanek’s and Hanson’s hair got pretty out of hand — shaggy, unkempt, long,” Fahy said. “Their battalion chiefs told them, ‘You got to meet the policy.’ “

Fire departments have different grooming policies, ranging from basic ones like Elgin’s to detailed ones about hair length, piercings, tattoos and more, Fahy said.

“We don’t have a hair problem within the Elgin Fire Department,” he said. “We have 133 members, and we have three members that are angry about the process of arbitration.”

Rychtanek agreed it’s all about the pending contract. “Ultimately, we want (the city) to sit down and negotiate the contract. It’s not that we want to grow our hair long.”

The contract is stuck in arbitration over a provision regarding minimum manning, Rychtanek said. “It’s despicable that firefighters have gone over two years without a contract,” he said. “It’s in arbitration, just like every one of the contracts except one on the 23 years I’ve been on the job. It’s the way the city negotiates — they arbitrate.”

thanks Dan

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Elgin to add more preemption devices

Dec 3

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from theChicagoTribune.com:

Five traffic lights along Kimball Street are expected to be converted so fire and police vehicles can control them during an emergency, making it safer and more efficient for public safety vehicles and drivers who use the busy downtown road, one of six routes in Elgin with bridges that cross the Fox River.

The City Council is set to approve a $85,557 contract Wednesday night for installing the devices which can be controlled by police cars and fire trucks, helping clear passage through potentially dangerous intersections. The intersections in question Wednesday are Kimball with Dundee Avenue, with Center Street, with Spring Street, with Douglas Avenue and with Grove Avenue.

“Kimball is important because it is a main pathway for fire apparatus from one side of the city to the other,” Fire Chief John Fahy said. “And almost every east side call for ambulance service has to head to the west side, where Presence Saint Joseph and Advocate Sherman hospitals are.”

Department policy and national standards require fire department vehicles come to a full stop at a red traffic signal. So, with five intersections along Kimball downtown, the possibility exists that vehicles might have to stop at every intersection along Kimball, slowing emergency-related travel. Fahy noted that a federal highway study from 2006 found that the three main benefits reported by places using the devices included improved response times, better safety, and a cost savings.

Preemption devices have been around for decades, but the technology didn’t improve to make them reliable or affordable enough for most fire departments until about 10 years ago. “So in 2005, (then) Chief Jack Henrici initiated a program to prioritize lighted intersections and incrementally have the devices at all of them,” Fahy said.

 

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Elgin FD achieves ISO Class 2 rating

Jul 11

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from KaneCountyConnects.com:

The Elgin Fire Department achieved an Insurance Service Office Community Public Protection Classification 2 rating, which places the Elgin department in the top 2 percent of communities nationwide. The rating becomes effective on Oct. 1, 2015.

The national Insurance Services Office (ISO) regularly evaluates fire departments and classifies them according to their ability to respond to fires.  The review includes an evaluation of the fire department, code department, dispatch operations and water operations in each community. Each entity receives an individual rating, and then those ratings are considered together to determine the final Public Protection Classification.

“Insurance companies use the ISO classifications to establish premiums for both commercial and residential property policies, with a better rating resulting in a lower insurance rate and cost of insurance,” Fire Chief John Fahy explained.  “Achievement of this improved rating is a tremendous benefit to renters, businesses and property owners.”

This improved classification is the highest rating in the 150-year history of the city and reflects well on the commitment to the department’s core values of a safe community. For the previous 20 years, Elgin received an ISO Class 3 ranking on the 1-10 scale, with Class 1 being the best rating.

About the Elgin Fire Department

  • The Elgin Fire Department has 133 sworn firefighters who provide a full range of coverage to 38.8 square miles and service a population of over 108,000 people.
  • The coverage area includes the historic downtown area, two major medical facilities, two college campuses, multiple industrial and office parks, Illinois largest gaming facility, a growing commercial segment, as well as single and multi-family homes.
  • Services are also provided along main transportation routes that include sections of Interstate 90, routes 20, 31 and 25, the Randall Road corridor, the Northwest METRA rail line, and two major freight lines.

thanks Dan

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