Fire chief and union meet at table
Fort Myers Beach Fire Chief Mike Becker and members of the Local 1826 District 3 and 15 Union agreed to a five-percent reduction in wages across the board -equating to $260,000- to help offset nearly $900,000 in budget shortfall on Monday at the District’s Administrative Building. According to Becker, shortfalls have to come out of personnel either through voluntary Collective Bargaining to reduce wages, reduce benefits, reduce overall employee costs and/or reduction of workforce.
The two parties then discussed a stop in education incentives and promotions to those employees who do not yet have those benefits -an action that would remain until the three-year contract expires in 2010 and negotiations open again.
Becker said he would recall three of the six laid-off fire fighters to show good faith.
“I’m really excited to see the Union sit down and work with us,” said Becker. “We are almost two-thirds of the way there. The specific articles that we agreed to involved a stop in longevity, incentives and promotions to constitute a true freeze.”
Both Becker and Union officials met again Tuesday afternoon to discuss health care revisions. The fire chief hoped to negotiate $400,000 from the health care plan to further lessen the bulk of the shortfall. The result of the second meeting was disclosed after press time.
“The whole idea of the second meeting is to sign the documents that we agreed to and discuss the wage reductions and health care,” said Becker.
“If we can get that done, we might be able to get everyone back to work.
If I get labor to take a quarter of a million dollars off of this, take half of a million dollars out of health care, then I can go to the Board (of Fire Commissioners) and say, ‘I’m $300,000 away from making this puzzle work, can we take it out of reserves this year?’ As soon as we get a balanced budget, we can start working on next year’s balanced budget.”
The Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District Board of Commissioners officially set the millage rate and budget for fiscal year 2009/10 at their final hearing at Fire Station #31 on Tuesday, Sept. 15. The approved millage rate stands at 2.3017 mils, which is the roll back rate and a zero percent increase, and the adopted budget of $14,227,544 reflects that millage rate.
Before the two actions were adopted, Becker made a presentation which reported a budget shortfall of $1,543,500 as of Sept. 4. Six fire fighters were then laid off in an effort to reduce that shortfall and the deficit shrank to just under $900,000.
“Every bit of savings will save jobs,” Becker said at the final budget hearing on Sept. 15.
If negotiations would have failed with Union, the fire chief might have been in an unfortunate position to lay off more employees. Three more fire fighter layoffs would amount to just shy of $300,000.
“This was a true success,” said Becker. “This actually saved jobs and should put good people back to work.”