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Posts Tagged Mattoon Firefighters Local 691

Mattoon Fire Department news

Oct 7

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 3 Comments

Excerpts from icbcradio.com:

During a meeting Tuesday night, the Mattoon City Council voted unanimously without additional discussion to approve a memorandum of understanding with Mattoon Firefighters Local 691 to reduce the minimum certification requirement for newly hired firefighters from EMT-paramedic to EMT-basic.

The union has called for the city to bring staffing back up to 30 firefighters as required by the current contract, which was set to expire in 2018 but is still in place until a new contract is reached. The Mattoon Fire Department currently has approximately 22 firefighters on staff. City officials have said that they are having trouble finding candidates who have paramedic certification.

Under the memorandum, there are provisions for new hires to obtain paramedic certification while they are working in the fire department. The temporary reduction in EMT requirements will expire when the city and union execute a new contract.

The two parties are also going through an Illinois Labor Relations Board hearing process, in which the city is appealing a recent ruling that the Mattoon Fire Department’s ambulance service should be reinstated. The city shuttered its service on July 25, 2018 as a cost-cutting measure and now relies solely on a private provider.

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Mattoon Fire Department news

Oct 17

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 3 Comments

Excerpts from jg-tc.com:

The Mattoon city council is scheduled (Tuesday) tonight to consider eliminating the assistant fire chief position within the Mattoon Fire Department due to budgetary restraints.

The proposed ordinance also calls for restructuring the management of the fire department by transferring the assistant chief, currently Sean Junge, to fill a vacant shift captain position.

Regarding the budgetary restraints, the proposed ordinance states that the city approved a deficit budget for fiscal year 2018-19 and continues to make adjustments in an effort to reduce this deficit.

In addition, the proposed ordinance states that the city is in negotiations for a new contract with Mattoon Firefighters Local 691. The city is making efforts to comply with an arbitration ruling to return staffing levels to 30 firefighter bargaining members. Mattoon currently has 23 firefighters.

If Junge becomes a shift captain, he would be eligible to become a bargaining member of the firefighter union and would have to take a 15 percent reduction in salary if this change occurs.

The Mattoon firefighters posted a statement on their Facebook page that says the elimination of the assistant chief position puts “the community and our department in a more compromised position” and is “another direct attack on department staffing.

The statement indirectly referred to the city’s recent elimination of the Mattoon Fire Department’s ambulance service. City officials have said that this service was losing money as the city dealt with a budget deficit and that this service duplicated the work of existing private ambulance providers in Mattoon.

thanks Keith

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Mattoon Fire Department news (more)

Aug 12

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 2 Comments

Excerpts from jg-tc.com:

Medical calls Thursday evening and an accident Friday afternoon resulted in Mattoon emergency personnel calling in ambulances from out of town for help with patient care and transport. This comes after the Mattoon Fire Department’s ambulance service ended July 25 in a move directed by the city council that drew criticism in the community. The council has cited budget concerns for the decision.

“We were short ambulances,” MFD Chief Tony Nichols said Friday. Thursday night, as well, a shortage of ambulances to cover Mattoon was seen, according to Nichols. “CFD had to come over cover for Dunn’s two times. They were both medicals. I don’t know the severity of them,” he said. “They did dispatch our ALS engines out. We were able to respond and start care until CFD arrived and then they took over.”

Greg Jerdan, owner of Mitchell-Jerdan Ambulance Service said finding personnel is not a problem for his service. “This morning for a couple-hour period we were down to one ambulance,” Jerdan said Friday. “We were fully staffed at that time. We are fully staffed and for the next coming two-week period in our staffing time we’re a minimum of two ambulances or three deep. “Today there was a two-hour period when we were down to one rig and on a rare occasion that’s what happens and that’s what did happen — that’s what mutual aid is for.”

Jerdan, said the auto accident occurred during a time when Mitchell-Jerdan was temporarily short staffed.

“We are not on 911 this week,” he said, explaining that this means Dunn’s is first to be called out for a 911 call on Mitchell-Jerdan’s off week, and vice versa. “Every other week is rotated between Dunn’s and us. We were only short-staffed for a period of a few hours under a rare situation (and) something happened beyond our control,” Jerdan said. “This is not a situation that is common. Since the City of Mattoon has gotten out of the ambulance business, I believe the events have been very calm and handled quite properly.”

“If it’s not going to be able to be handled (by two private ambulance services), then we have some options of either requiring a certain number of ambulances every day or opening up a third ambulance service,” City Administrator Kyle Gill said. “I hope this is just a growing pain. The ordinance that we passed does not say how many ambulances they have to run on a daily basis. It’s all on performance. Of course the less ambulances they have available, the performance is going to go down.”

“Some of the things that happened I’m still looking into,” he said. “The bad car accident … there was three people that needed to be transported so it took three ambulances, that way Charleston had to get pulled over. That’s not what we want to see happen of course. We don’t want that to continue.”

Mattoon emergency services requesting aid from other communities is not unprecedented.”There’s always been times when other agencies would come over even when we had three ambulances,” Gill said. “There are times when everything happens all at once; we just don’t want that to be a common occurrence.

Bart Owen, president of Mattoon Firefighters Local 691, said there is a need for more ambulances than are now running in Mattoon.

thanks Dennis

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Mattoon Fire Department news (more)

Jul 29

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 1 Comment

Excerpts from jg-tc.com:

The Mattoon Fire Department’s ambulance service ended at the scheduled time of 7 a.m. Wednesday, and the two private services in Mattoon are now handling all of the local ambulance calls. City officials set the July 25 end date after the Mattoon City Council voted on July 18, 2017 to eliminate the fire department’s ambulance service as a cost-cutting measure.

Firefighters are disappointed that they will no longer be able to provide an ambulance service for Mattoon, however they appreciate that the city has opted to keep the fire department’s advanced life support equipment in operation.

Mattoon firefighters will no longer provide emergency medical transportation, but they will be dispatched to emergency scenes if an ambulance is not immediately available. Firefighters will be able to provide advanced life support care on scene if needed until an ambulance crew arrives to take the patient to the hospital.

Bart Owen, president of Mattoon Firefighters Local 691, said firefighters on Wednesday transferred advanced life support equipment from the department’s three former ambulances to three fire trucks. 

The two private services in operation in Mattoon are Mitchell-Jerdan Ambulance Service and Dunn’s Ambulance. Mitchell-Jerdan, based in Mattoon, has provided an ambulance since 1934. Dunn’s, based in Taylorville, has been operating in Mattoon since 2008. The fire department’s ambulance service started full time in 2011.

The city plans to keep the fire department’s three former ambulances in storage for the time being. The city and the firefighters union are still going through grievance processes regarding the ambulance service elimination and an arbitration process for completing a new contract.

City officials have said that the fire department’s ambulance service lost money and duplicated the work of private providers. The firefighters union countered that the department’s service generated needed revenue for the city and provided essential ambulance coverage for Mattoon.

thanks Dennis

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Mattoon Fire District news (more)

Jul 23

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 1 Comment

Excerpts from jg-tc.com:

The Mattoon City Council ratified new regulations for private ambulance services and heard several concerns regarding the scheduled July 25 end of the fire department’s ambulance service.

Top fire department officials questioned whether the city is ready to switch over all ambulance calls to private services. Representatives from one of the two current private services, Dunn’s Ambulance, said they will be ready but delays for this switch have made it difficult to hire crews. A representative for a possible third service, Abbott EMS, sought more information about the application process.

The city has revised its regulations in preparation for the July 25 switch. The new regulations include the requirement that ambulances must arrive at the scene of advanced life support calls within eight minutes of being dispatched. Ambulance services must report this data to the city.

Fire Chief Tony Nichols said he is concerned about the city entering uncharted territory if it completely eliminates the fire department’s ambulance service on July 25. He urged the council to keep the department’s advance life support equipment ready as a backup to help handle the call volume.

Assistant Fire Chief Sean Junge said feels that firefighters, as stakeholders in the emergency response system, were given little opportunity to provide input on the new ambulance regulations while private services had a lot of input. Junge said he cannot recommend approval for the new regulations due to his concerns about this document.

The council voted on July 18, 2017 to eliminate the fire department’s ambulance service. City officials have said that this service loses money and duplicates the work of private providers. Mattoon Firefighters Local 691 has countered that the department’s service generates needed revenue for the city and provides essential ambulance coverage for Mattoon.

Casey Schmitz, operations manager for Dunn’s, said the city has asked private services to be ready to handle all of the ambulance calls, but uncertainty about when this change will take place has made it difficult to hire crews. Nevertheless, she said both Dunn’s and Mitchell-Jerdan Ambulance Service plan to have additional crew members and ambulances in place to continue serving the community.”We are not going to leave anybody high and dry,” Schmitz said. She added that Dunn’s welcomes partnering with firefighter crews that have basic and advanced life support equipment. She said this backup service was standard practice before the fire department’s started its own ambulance service several years ago.

Brian Gerth, operations manager for Abbott EMS, asked several questions about how the Coles County 911 system rotates calls to the different ambulance services and about the application process to become a provider under the city’s new regulations. City officials advised that applicants do not need to have an office in Mattoon when they apply but will need to have one before they operate ambulances in Mattoon.

Bart Owen, president of the firefighters union, urged the city to keep the fire department’s advanced life support capabilities in place as a backup. He also questioned whether the city has a plan in place for backup service and how it will have time to process ambulance service applications from current and possible new providers before July 25.

The city and the firefighters union are continuing to try to negotiate a new contract, and they met with a mediator on Tuesday. The current contract expired on April 30 but remains in effect until a new one is reached. Staffing levels have been a contentious issue in the contract negotiations due to the possibility of the number of firefighters being cut further due to the ambulance service elimination.

Owen said there are now eight legal proceedings regarding various related grievances and court filings that will need some type of resolution before the arbitration process can be completed. He said the union has offered to make concessions, including cuts of three staff members and other measures that would save $663,000 per year.

thanks Dennis

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Mattoon Fire Department news

Jul 11

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 2 Comments

Excerpts from jg-tc.com:

A four page report asserting that Mattoon Fire Department pension costs are too high was recently mailed to more than 11,200 household and business addresses in the city limits.

Former Mattoon City Council member David Schilling wrote this critique. Mattoon Firefighters Local 691 has responded by saying that Schilling’s report skews its presentation of various financial figures regarding the fire department while not applying the same critical examination to other city departments or past actions by the city council.

Schilling, who served two terms as city finance commissioner from 2001 to 2009, said he has long been concerned about firefighter pension costs growing at a rate that he feels is financially unsustainable for the city.He started writing his report in January 2017 and went through many drafts before recently getting this critique ready for a mass mailing. He added that local businesses and community members anonymously donated money to cover the printing and mailing costs.

Schilling writes in his report that a firefighter can retire at age 50 with 20 years of experience, or 30 years for a full benefit, and then be eligible for a pension that grows at the rate of 3 percent compounded. He added that the pension program covers widows of firefighters, too. He wrote that the city’s annual firefighter pension payouts have increased from $1.2 million for 45 retirees in 2003 to $2.6 million for 55 retirees in 2018.

Schilling also writes about the city’s firefighter pension fund and the amount of money that city has to have in it based on the number and ages of the current and retired firefighters, and the percentage of funding. He wrote that the firefighter pension fund had net assets of $15.5 million in 2017, enough to fund only 30.4 percent of the $50.9 million in pension obligation for that year.

He said that the city also is facing similar levels of pension obligations and shortfalls in funding for the police pension fund.

“Pension cost issues have been predominately created by previous city councils not funding the pension plans,” said firefighter union president Bart Owen. “Firefighters have 9.43 percent deducted from our paychecks and have for years; yet the city did not fulfill their side of the deal. Now they are placing the blame on employees.”

Owen said pension plans are like retirement insurance and they balance retirement risk, like home or car insurance. He said participants contribute a set amount, like a premium, so it will cover them in retirement after they have worked for years and earned the benefit. As another example, he said everyone in Social Security eventually draws out more than they put into it. He added, “that’s the point or it would make no mathematical sense to create retirement systems.”

In addition, Owen said revisions to state law governing two tier pension systems for anyone hired in 2011 or later will save cities 25 percent on pension costs. He said new hires since then are no longer receiving 3 percent compounding yearly increases in their pensions. He also said the pensions are no longer based on the last day’s pay for a firefighter and are now based on an average eight of 10 years of salaries.

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Mattoon Fire Department news

May 23

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Excerpts from wandtv.com:

The City of Mattoon is suing the Mattoon Firefighters Local 691 over an award that gives them the option to remove the ambulances from the City of Mattoon and to impact bargain the result of the award.  The city says the union is not complying with the arbitration, because an agreement has not been reached on the removal of the ambulances.

The union has been negotiating with the city of the successor contract since January.  The union thinks the best option is for the fire department to remain in the ambulance service and offered to reduce staff and cut department expenses to meet the city council’s monetary goals.

The city has said reducing manpower is the only way to achieve their goals. The parties have met a dozen times trying to come up with the best solution.

A separate Arbitration award was issued in April which required the city to bring the staffing level up to 30 and maintain it there in a manner consistent with the contract. Since May of last year, the city has reduced staffing to 22 members. The union says this is in direct violation of their contract.

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