Boston Globe endorses Mayor’s efforts to reduce sick time

Boston Globe endorsed Mayor Fiorentini’s efforts to cut overtime and sick time

Calling it “a model for other cities and towns”, the Boston Globne today endorsed Mayor Fiorentini’s proposals to reduce overtime and sick leave by monitoring the use of sick time.

The Globe said said:

The Boston Globe, July 16, 2009

Haverhill: An eye for sick-leave abuses

Taxpayers in Haverhill got more than their money’s worth from the $13,000 spent on a private investigator who videotaped four of the city’s firefighters performing tasks such as lugging furniture, shoveling snow, and attending a hockey game after calling in sick. It appears that some Haverhill firefighters have caught the “dupe-the-public bug’’ common in other fire departments where overtime costs and sick time spike way above comparable costs in other city departments. The Haverhill firefighters union is calling it an unfair labor practice. But Mayor James Fiorentini is more concerned with fairness to the taxpayers and the overall fiscal health of his city. His efforts to sanitize Haverhill’s firehouses should be a model for other cities and towns with similar problems.

We Need Stimulus Pacakage

Last week, we had the greatest increase in unemployment since 1974.  Roughly 3 million have now lost their jobs since the start of this recession. 

President Obama has proposed a stimulus package that, while not prefect by any means, would add jobs and help get the country moving again.    The President’s critics say it is a spending bill.  As the President said, yes, that is what a stimulus bill is, spend and get the economy moving. 

Part of the stimulus package is school construction.  The Senate for reasons I can not understand, has stripped school construction from the package.

But fixing our broken schools throughout the country is stimuls, and is exactly what we need to get people working again.  Local cities and States can not afford to spend millions of dollars fixing school buildings.  Only the intervention of the Federal government will assist us.

Please join me in writing our Congresswoman, Nikki Tsongas, and our Senators, Kerry and Kennedy, and urging them to support keeping school construction money as part of the stimulus package.

Mayor Menino Warns of Drastic Cuts

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is expected to warn of drastic budget cuts in his State of the city speech this evening.

Menino is expected to reveal that Boston faces a whopping 4140 million budget deficit.  The deficit, according to Boston officials, is far to large to meet without layoffs, probably including layoffs in the public safety sector.

Every city in the State, and most cities throughout the country, face very difficult financial times as the economy continues to sour.

Later this week, I’ll be traveling to Washington to meet with teh United States Conference of Mayors and with our Congressional delegation concerning Haverhill’s plight.  I will argue to them that we have already made drastic cuts, and that Federal assistance to cities is needed if we are going to continue to provide basis services to our citizens.

Read more, Boston Herald story

Governor warns of possible cuts in local aid

Recently, Governor Patrick warned cities and towns that the economic downturn was having a dramatic effect on State tax revenues.  The Governor, who cut $1 billion from his budget in October, announced that he would be forced to cut another $1 billion in January or February.

The Governor has asked the legislature for permission to cut local aid in January.  Midyear cuts are devastating to cities and towns, since half of our budget is already spent. 

Meanwhile, House Speaker Salvatore Dimasi said that cities and towns should brace themselves for an additional 10% cut in local aid this coming June. 

In light of these pronouncement, I am meeting with department heads and asking for impact statements if the budget were cut.  We are looking at every budget, giving them target numbers, and asking what the impact of cutting to those target numbers would be.

With the cuts, the legislature is also considering giving the cities and towns the power to raise some additional revenues.  One item being proposed is a local meals tax.  A local meals tax would mean that 1 or 2% of the cost of a local restaurant meal would go to the local city or town.  A meals tax could raise us as much as $1-2 million.

New fees and taxes are never popular, particularly in a recession.  However, in light of the devastating budget cuts being proposed, it is an option we have to consider.

City finances

I can see from the posts on this blog that I have evidently not done a good job of explaining our city’s finances to our fine employees.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking some time to better explain our finances, and why we can not always give people what they want and what I would like to pay.

Here are some basic outlines:

Expenses

Every year our expenses rise faster than our revenues.  I know that for our employees, their health care costs, costs of fuel, electricity, gas and gasoline are rising faster than their income.  We understand that.  As a city, we have the very same problem.  Our expenses are rising just like yours. 

Revenues

Unlike a private business, we are very limited in what revenues we can raise.  Our health care and electricity costs can go up by any amount, but we can raise taxes by only 2.5%.  In private business, they would go out and look for new markets, and new products.  We are very limited in what we can raise. 

Bottom line…

Revenues can go up by 2.5% plus new growth.  Expenses very often go up by more than that.  We are forced to make cut-backs year after year.

Despite our challenges, and they are great, we have every single year offered cost of living increases to our employees.  (The two zero increases that our employees took where while Mayor Guerin was Mayor.) 

I understand that for many of our employees the modest cost of living increases we offer has not kept up with inflation.  The employees on this board have done a good job of reminding me that they pay taxes, and pay fuel bills and pay health care costs just like everyone else.  Thank you.  i do appreciate the problem and wish we were in a position to do more. 

I’ll be back in a week or two onto this board and put on more information about our finances. 

Jim Fiorentini

The High Cost of Union Time Off

Our contracts with our unions provide that if an employee needs time off for union business, then they can do that on city time and we will pay them for the time. If we have to fill the spot with another employee, we pay that other employee time and half. All of this is standard in employer/employee relationships.

These agreements require a certain amount of trust, and a certain amount of work by the unions to make certain that their members never misuse the privilege. 
Over the past several months, we have been tracking the use of union leave by various departments to see if there is misuse. Here are some numbers, you tell me if you think that anyone is misusing the system:

In the first six months of 2007, the highway had no time for union time, the clty clerk’s office, zero, the police department had $1,272 in time, to attend some conferences or meetings.  The teacher’s union, which does not get overtime, did not use any on the job time for negotiating.

The Fire Department, in that same period, cost us $8,500 in union time. 

That was 2007. In the first six months of 2008, the highway department and clerk’s office again had zero, the police department had $1,272, and this time, the fire department union time cost us $26,500.  Previous fire department unions in the city have averaged around $4,000 to $5,000 a year in union time. 

Use of union time in the fire department more than tripled from one year to the next and is 20 times more than in the police department. (Both groups, by the way, are in the process of contract negotiations.)

We have instituted a new policy in the fire department– a very simple one. If you are out on union time, you tell us why you are out and fill out a form justifying the reason. 

That new policy has spawned a number of complaints and grievances from the union. 

We are not going to tolerate anyone abusing the system. 

That’s my view. What’s yours?

 

 

 

Jim Fiorentini

More on sick leave

There has been a lot written about overtime and sick leave in the city.  We are taking steps to control and limit the amount of overtime and sick leave being taken.

This has the fire department union bent out of shape, and they used the City council meeting on Tuesday to take a few shots at me. 

All of the numbers I have posted about sick leave are accurate.  They show things to be proud of, and things we need to work harder on. 

Here are some things to be proud of. 

ü   Some city departments had little or no sick leave used last year.

 

ü   The Police Department, is trending down, from 671 hours of sick leave in 2005 to 611 in 2007, or from 7.29 days per employee per year in 2005 to 6.72 per employee in 2007.   In the first 5 months of 2008 they were down.  The police union has worked with us and we thank them for this.  Our police department does a tremendous job in controlling crime. 

 

ü   In the fire department, the overwhelming number of employees do not abuse sick leave.  38 firefighters had perfect attendance in 2007 and 44 had perfect attendance in 2008. 

 

Here are some things we need to take a look at and which concern me:

 

·        Sick leave usage in the Haverhill Fire Department is trending upwards, from 801.5 hours in 2005 to 899 in 2006 to 1099 in 2007.  This has nothing to do with donated time to the sick leave bank which did not start in large numbers until 2008. 

·        In 2005, 7.56 days per employee, in 2006–8.48 days, in 2007—10.88 day– again, not related to the sick leave bank. 

·        Saturday and Sunday are 29% of the week, but 38% of all sick leave is taken on Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday is 14% of the week, but 23% of sick time is taken on Saturday;

·        Overtime costs for sick-leave coverage for the first 6 months of the year have increased from $53,559 in 2006 to $91,000 for the same period in 2007. 

 

Controlling and managing sick time and overtime is a very complex and difficult situation  We understand that being a firefighter is a very difficult and strenuous job—even on days where there are no fires.  I also understand that we have a good fire department, where the overwhelming majority of the firefighters do not abuse sick leave. 

 

On the other hand, there are the numbers.  Would I be doing my job if I didn’t look into them further?

 

Jim Fiorentini

Controlling Sick Time and Overtime

The Eagle Tribune wrote a story recently on our efforts to control overtime and sick leave in the city budget.  There were some errors in the story, some very minor, some not so minor.  The overall gist of the story was correct:  we have a problem with sick leave and we are working hard to correct it.  We are making progress.  In the first 5 months this year, we have 500 less hours of sick time than we did last year. 

Here are some of the Statement in Tribune: 

Statement:  “The Mayor said t these types of abuses led the city to insert tough  sick-time language into recently negotiated contracts with police patrolmen and superior officers and water employees.”

Fact:  These contractual provisions were in the contracts for some time.  We invoked the provisions, but did not insert them.  That was done some time ago. 

Statement:  “The new police contact allows the chief to require a doctor’s note efore officers can be paid for sick leave…”

Fact:  Again, these matters have been in the contract for some time…

Statement:  “The police chief and DPW director have tried to discipline their employees for calling out excessively, but the labor unions complain….”

Fact:  This was the FIre Chief and the Fire Department, not the police department.  The police department has made great progress on sick leave, primarily because of the contract language and the efforts to enforce that language.  The Fire Department has no such language. 

 

Fact: Most of our employees are good, decent and hard working people.  Only a very few abuse the system.  About 28% of our employees, around 100 people, had perfect sick leave attendence last year.  Many of our employees have not taken a sick day in years,   I am very proud of them. 

Mayor Orders Restrictions on Take Home Vehicles

Take home vehicles for employees are a small part of our budget, but a big part of our headaches.  Here are some numbers:

a.  We have a total of 230 vehicles in our fleet, including police cars, fire trucks, snow plows police cruisers, etc.

b. Of those, a total of 55 are take home vehicles.  Most of the take home vehicles are in the police department, a few in DPW and fire. 

c.  The general claim is that take home vehicles are important for several reasons.  Emergency repair people who are on call for the city are said to be able to get to an emergency more quickly if they have the car with the tools at home, rather than having to go into work to get it.  Police officers and fire officials are able to respond more quickly to an emergency if they have take home vehicles. 

Despite all of this, with gasoline approaching $4 a gallon, I felt it was time to cut back.  I ordered all our departments to cut back on take home vehicle usage.  The plan is for an overall cutback of 15% in usage.  To meet this goal, we implementing the following:

a.  Each department has to eliminate 10% of their take home cars;

b.  Each remaining take home car has to be justified– what is the reason why the employee is allowed to take it home?

c.  No one outside the city is allowed to take home a car; no passengers are allowed unless it is city business related,. GPS has been installed in selected vehicles, and department heads are to monitor usage carefully each month.

At a recent council meeting, some councilors claimed that we had “gas guzzling” vehicles that average 10-15 miles to the gallon and that replacing them would save money.  Thisdoes not appear to be the case.  Our fleet is fairly new, and the only vehicles we have that get 10-15 miles to the gallon are fire trucks.  A ladder truck costs about $1 million and it would not be cost efficient to replace their vehicles.  I’ll have more on our  vehicle replacement policy later.

Meanwhile, this is all the high hanging fruit.  The low hanging fruit in energy conservation is in buildings, not cars.  More on what we are planning to save energy there later.

What are your thoughts?  How can we save on energy?

Mayor Jim