BY PENELOPE OVERTON | REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
Saturday, December 27, 2008 10:09 AM EST
WATERBURY — The city estimates the proposed fire union contract would add an extra $1.3 million to next year's budget, $1.4 million in the second year and $1.6 million in the third year of the contract.
The figures are included in a cost analysis that personnel director Peter Abare-Brown sent to the Board of Aldermen Friday.
The board will consider the fire union contract at its Jan. 6 meeting. The union approved the tentative deal earlier this month.
Mayoral aide Steve Gambini called the cost estimates "very conservative."
The biggest additional cost is the $493,000 the city will spend to hire new firefighters.
Those new firefighters are needed to create a fourth platoon, or shift, to staff the schedule now that the city has agreed to an average 42-hour workweek.
The city acknowledges it also will have to fill three lingering vacancies.
The cost analysis reveals the city has now decided it will only need to hire nine new people to create that fourth platoon, not 12 as it had originally said when describing the new deal. The city was using the 12 new hires estimate at the time of the union vote.
The three vacant positions will still be filled.
Officially, the union voted on new contract language that created the average 42-hour workweek. To achieve that, however, the city acknowledged the department must create the fourth shift. But now, the city believes that can be done with only nine new hires.
Fernando Ramirez, the union president, said Friday the change in the number of new positions to be hired would not have made a difference in the union vote. He said the cost estimates in the city's report jibed with what the union had estimated.
The second biggest cost comes from additional overtime, according to the city's cost analysis. The city would have to spend $400,000 more in year one, $406,000 more in the second year and $416,000 in the third year.
The proposed contract gives out no raises in the first year. In year two, however, union members would get a 1.5 percent raise, which would cost about $230,000 a year, and the third-year raise of 2.5 percent would cost an extra $380,000.
In addition to the annual salary increase, firefighters will essentially be getting an hourly wage raise in the second and third years of the proposed labor deal because they will be working fewer hours each week.
The savings from the union's biggest concession — agreeing to give up retirement medical benefits for the last seven hires and all new hires — will not be seen for years, but city officials consider that to be a huge long-term financial benefit.