08-08-18 Personnel and Finance (#2)

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®CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK else that goes along with running that program. Having said that, the replacement Fire Fighters who would be replacing them on shift will be brand new Fire Fighters who would come in at the Fire Fighter Third(3`d)Class level and they would be paid,roughly with salaries and benefits about $150,000 and they would be on shift, frankly more frequently, because they would have less PTO time. Those are all considerations. The second (2"d) thing I would like to point out on this is we would like to change a couple of titles for three (3) individuals in our department that are long- time employees with the department that are civilian employees very close to the top of their salary range. It is very difficult for us to be able to empower them to take on additional projects and other things because they are almost maxed out of their job title's salary range.The changes will increase the range. They are not necessarily going to start earning the top of their range but it would create more room within the range. Additionally, we have in the budget a two percent(2%) increase for the other four(4) civilian employees. The total cost of those changes, even if those individuals go directly to the max end of their range, is $15,000. Council Attorney Bob Palmer left the meeting at 6:02 p.m. Chief Cox went on, Staffing wise, I also thought it was important for us to point something out. Last,year,for the 2018 budget,the Council allowed us to add six(6)additional Fire Fighters. What we were trying to do was address the overtime costs which were very heavy. I know several Council Members had seen the Tribune article last ye that talked about the Fire and Police Departments overtime costs. What we had done was an analysis that looked at the amount of overtime paid out versus hiring folks in to offset some of that. So we added those Fire Fighters and we swore them in on February which bumped our numbers up to two hundred forty-nine (249) but we had two (2) individuals in the DROP Program already, plus we had two (2) unexpected retirements in January 2018 that automatically just dropped us right back down to our previous max level. Then we had multiple people leave in April 2018, four (4) of which were DROP eligible. They all took the DROP and we had anticipated that but then we lost a couple more after April 2018 that we hadn't anticipated. The challenge we've had is while we swore in six (6) additional individuals, we have only been able to reduce overtime by about three hundred and fifty (350) hours for 2018. Having said that, I would also like to point out that had we not put those six(6)individuals on the department,we would have had to pay out tremendous amounts of overtime. He continued,As Captain Ellis mentioned a little bit ago,we anticipate two(2)individuals leaving in the DROP Program next ye ax so what we are trying to do is make sure we are anticipating as many folks as we can ahead of time to be able to identify how many folks we need to be able to put on. We had one (1) gentleman leave on June 2"d, 2018 that we did not know would leave prior to starting our recruit academy that is graduating this Friday. We are graduating seven(7) recruits on Friday and we are already going to be down one(1)overall within the department. Some years we've had only one(1) or two (2)people to replace. This year the number may actually be around fourteen(14) and we had only anticipated five (5). That definitely set us back. He went on, I would like to now quickly go through some of these accomplishments we have here (referencing a slide in the presentation). We completed construction on new Station Four(4). We began construction on new Station Nine (9). We anticipate that building to be complete next year around May 2019. This ye we have graduated two (2) regional recruit academies from our Fire Training Center. The first(ls)one (1)had some La Porte and Michigan City Fire Recruits and the one (1) we are graduating on this Friday at 9:00 a.m. at the Training Center, which all are invited EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227W.Jefferson Bvld I South Bend.Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 If 574.235.9173 1 TTD574.235.5567 lwww.southbendin.gov 13