In a unanimous vote in the mayor’s City Hall meeting room, the panel voted to issue 51 conditional offers for a class that is expected to have about 25 recruits, but not before the commission’s chairman voiced concern about being caught in the middle of a dispute between the administration and aldermen.

“Last week, the Board of Fire Commissioners tabled discussion on this issue seeking further assurance that funding was indeed available, drawing an accusation (from the administration) that we were jeopardizing public safety,” Chairman William Celentano said.

He noted the Board of Aldermen pulled funding for the class for what it assumed was an entire fiscal year, which ends on June 30, but said the fire board would move forward after receiving assurances that the funding would be restored sooner.

The city plans to seat a class as soon as late March.

The commissioner’s statement drew a sharp response from Mayor John DeStefano Jr., who “strongly disputed” that aldermen cut 12 months of funding.

“I’m not clear, maybe I am clear, where this came from, but this isn’t about budget. Not hiring firefighters is not about budget. ... That’s clear to the city administration,” he told the fire board. “You are part of the administration. You are executive branch. You are appointees of the mayor and you’re not in the middle.”

The dispute goes back almost a year, when the aldermanic finance committee cut $320,206 from the budget to delay the class by six months. Alderman Alphonse Paolillo Jr. later introduced an amendment to cut another $320,206, to extend the delay to a year.

That’s not the city’s take. Whatever his intent, Paolillo’s amendment stated the delay would be for three additional months and the $640,000, in fact, reflects what it would cost to seat a class for only nine months, said city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts.

“What they passed was clear. ... The language said ‘delay nine months’ and the funding backed that up,” Smuts said. “If that three months was a mistake, it doesn’t change what they passed.”

Paolillo maintains the intention was to push the class back by another six months, so he duplicated the six-month amount carved out in committee. If the dollar figures don’t add up to a year, he noted those numbers came from the city administration’s budget office.

The backdrop of it all is the controversy surrounding the hiring exam itself, and the city’s decision, after the process was under way, to score it exclusively on its oral portion, causing some to question its integrity.

Fire Union President Firefighter Patrick Egan, who has criticized the process from the outset, said the situation was “unfortunate ... that once again there’s a cloud that hangs over everyone’s head” over civil service.

Smuts said the complaints over the test is “rehash.”

“I think we’ve had extensive conversation with that. I know you continue to have problems with it but for the bodies concerned, it’s settled,” Smuts said.

While people can disagree with how the hiring test was conducted, it was certified by the city Civil Service Commission, he said.