St Louis (MO) City officials intend to announce within the next two weeks that they will cut between 30 and 60 firefighting positions, the first firefighter layoffs in recent history, and potentially close two city firehouses. In the face of strapped city budgets, Cincinnati has discussed cutting its fire department budget by $11 million. Firefighters in Jacksonville, Fla., were considering 2 percent pay cuts. City leaders in Maryland, New Jersey, California and Arizona were all contemplating layoffs in their fire departments. "Right now we feel like we’ve got a gun to our head with the threat of layoffs and firehouses being closed," said Chris Molitor, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 73.
The St Louis firefighters union presented an offer to the city Monday, after months of discussions, to reduce pension costs temporarily while cutting disability pay by retraining injured firefighters in other careers, according to union leaders.
But a city official with knowledge of the negotiations said the union proposal was unlikely to cut deep enough to satisfy city leaders’ concerns about the department’s future. City staffers intend to calculate how many firefighters the city would have to lay off to balance this year’s budget and prepare for booming pension costs to come.
Moreover, if the department doesn’t get a $5 million federal grant this winter, the city will almost certainly have to cut in a second round, city and union officials said.
Union representatives, however, remained hopeful Tuesday that city leaders would accept their proposal, and forestall layoffs for a year, buying the two sides time to reconfigure pensions and pay.
"Right now we feel like we’ve got a gun to our head with the threat of layoffs and firehouses being closed," said Chris Molitor, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 73. "We want to figure out true long-range solutions."
Molitor said cutting fire units and closing houses would increase response times, resulting in fire deaths. Moreover, he said, the moves could boost the cost of home and business insurance, which is based in part on proximity to fire stations.
Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said both sides had worked hard to come to terms. "Unfortunately, with the economy, this is going to be a hard nut to crack," he said. "The fire department has saved money this year. Whether or not we’ll be able to hire more firefighters in the near future is another question."
Public Safety Director Charles Bryson did not return phone calls. Jeff Rainford, chief of staff for Mayor Francis Slay, would not discuss specifics of the negotiations and said no final decisions had been made.
But city leaders, including Rainford, have long said that with revenues sinking and pension costs skyrocketing, they see few options other than layoffs.
"If costs continue to rise as they have in the past, we won’t have a fire department, we’ll just have a fire pension," Rainford said last week. "At some point, someone has to stand up for the taxpayers."
Pension funds took a heavy hit when the market crashed. The firefighter fund lost more than $100 million, and fell to about $400 million last year, according to a city summary of the Firemen’s Retirement System investment performance.
City payments to the fund have gone from $6 million, or about one-eighth of the fire department’s budget in 2001, to an anticipated $24 million this fiscal year, or nearly one-third of the department’s budget, according to city figures.
The city wants to hold the fire department’s total budget at its current level of $74.4 million a year. To do so, officials have demanded that the union find a way to keep pension expenses flat next year and to stop pension costs from rising so quickly in future years.
St. Louis is not in a unique position.
In the face of strapped city budgets, Cincinnati has discussed cutting its fire department budget by $11 million. Firefighters in Jacksonville, Fla., were considering 2 percent pay cuts. City leaders in Maryland, New Jersey, California and Arizona were all contemplating layoffs in their fire departments.
Officials here have already cut millions of dollars from the city budget this year.
They trimmed 25 percent from ward funds used to fix potholes, sidewalks and other projects. They cut police overtime and education budgets. They began charging $11 per family per month for trash pickup. And they chopped about 150 city positions — landscapers, electricians, jail guards, sheriff’s deputies and truck mechanics — laying off about 55 workers.
But St. Louis officials haven’t been able to come to terms with firefighters.
Firefighters say they understand the economy is rough. But they feel as if they’re shouldering more of the load than other departments, by taking cuts to pay, benefits and now maybe retirement, too.
In recent months, relations between the two groups have become embittered. In June, the city sued the state over a new law that allowed St. Louis firefighters, unlike most other city employees, to live outside city boundaries. Then, just last week, the firefighter retirement system sued the city for changing sick-leave rules that boost retirement pay.
City leaders argue that firefighters already make more on average than city employees — $58,000 compared with $43,000. Moreover, the fire department hasn’t really cut jobs in at least two decades. Twenty years ago, it employed about 830, of which 630 were uniformed firefighters. This year, the numbers are roughly the same.
Yet the number of fires, aldermen point out, has dropped drastically, from 9,200 in 1987 to fewer than half that. Some firehouses could probably close, aldermen said, without a major impact on safety.
But firefighters say they don’t just put out fires now. They evacuate the elderly from hot summer homes, investigate 911 hang-ups and install smoke detectors.
And, they say, bureaucrats don’t understand the way the department fights fires.
When a fire breaks out, the closest firehouse answers. But the truck at the next-closest station comes second, to break open windows, ventilate the house and protect the first truck’s crew. And another truck then covers for that one.
If you get rid of one truck, more homes might burn, more people die, they say.
Besides, said union president Molitor, layoffs will just add to the collective misery in this economic downturn.
The city has tried trimming firefighters before.
In 1947, the city announced plans to lay off 40 of its 875 firefighters, but Mayor Aloys P. Kaufmann dropped the idea after the city grand jury warned that cutting the department would produce "an increased hazard to life and property."
In 1975 and again in 1976, with the city budget hurting from a recent recession, City Hall again proposed cutting the number of firefighter jobs. Neither instance led to any layoffs.
