Remember this? There was an effort a year and a half ago to try to reign in City costs by reigning in personnel vacancies, starting with those at the WFD. At the time, the WFD threatened and tried to frighten people into what would happen if these vacant positions were cut , including some vauge threats for targeting districts whose Councilperson voted for these cuts with some degraded response time. This is from Chief Goode’s blog at the time:
On the other hand, if you believe in what they are doing than I will have no choice but to believe that those Council Persons who believe the City of Wilmington should cut firefighter jobs and close fire engines actually do represent you and your council districts wishes and intentions. In doing so, all of those Council districts will be the districts that we will be forced to consider reducing coverage in!
The measure that would delete these vacants and the associated budget passed the City Council, but not by a veto-proof margin. So that the usual suspects s– the ones who routinely are not interested in the fiscal health of the city — voted no. They were (for those keeping score at home): Sam Prado, Justin Wright, Trippi Congo, Sherry Dorsey-Walker and Bob Williams.
So jump to now, where we discover that the WFD is 6 months into its budget and $300,000 over its overtime budget for the year. What does that mean? It means that the rolling company shutdowns are back as a cost cutting measure AND both Goode and Williams are now quite open to eliminating those vacant positions:
The higher-than-average overtime cost was blamed on five vacancies in the department and coverage for personnel out because of injury or extended sick leave. As a result, Goode said one of the city’s fire companies will regularly be shut down on a rotating basis to offset the costs and he could move to eliminate a handful of vacant positions in the agency. […]
Mayor Dennis Williams (D) said Tuesday morning he was already aware of the overtime issues and removing the five vacancies currently found in the department could save more than $390,000. He called the option a “strong possibility.”
Got that? The WFD started its budget year with its vacants intact, with an overtime budget and still overspent its overtime. Which says to me that if City Council had been taking its job seriously a year and a half ago, this could have been avoided. Especially since we can tell now that neither the vacants or the rolling shutdowns was really a problem.
Bud Freel had convinced Theo Gregory to embark on this review of vacant positions in the city and once they got the WFD push back, Gregory apparently did not want to return to that work. Some fiscal responsibility is hard work — especially in the face of an Administration who doesn’t value that much. But some of this current situation with the WFD could have been avoided if Sam Prado, Justin Wright, Trippi Congo, Sherry Dorsey-Walker and Bob Williams were as committed to the City’s fiscal health as Bud Freel is.
So where are the other smoking guns out there? Theo Gregory abandoned the effort to review vacant positions in other departments after this. He shouldn’t have. And the WFD blowing its budget when there was an earlier fix should be the lesson.