Fire union leaders across Massachusetts are raising the alarm over what they say is a reluctance from municipal officials to adequately fund their departments, risking the safety of firefighters and the communities they serve.
Smoke is building in Fairhaven as the fire union in the small South Coast town claims leaders there are threatening to lay off two recently hired firefighters if an upcoming proposition 2.5 override fails.
Residents will be asked to vote on a budget that includes funding for the addition of four firefighters to an understaffed fire department, but union President Kevin Gonsalves told the Herald there’s more behind the request than the community knows.
Gonsalves and other union representatives, in a release last week, said town officials agreed in January to the hiring of four additional firefighters, without raising concerns about funding.
The four selected candidates have accepted the jobs and are in the process of being onboarded, Gonsalves said. Two of the positions are being covered by an increase in ambulance fund receipts, while the town is funding the two others, he said.
The conflict is coming at a time when the Fairhaven Fire Department is running four groups of just six firefighters, well below the suggested level of 14 per crew, according to a recommendation made last year by the International Association of Fire Fighters.
“Playing politics with firefighters isn’t dangerous — it’s deadly,” Gonsalves said Saturday. “Something is going to happen and then all of a sudden people will be up in arms, asking ‘How could we have fixed this?’ It’s going to be too late at that point.”
Stasia Powers, chairwoman of the Fairhaven Select Board, in an email Saturday declined to clarify whether the town is looking to cut the two recent hires, and if it is, why such a move is needed.
The Select Board has not set a date for the override election, Powers said, adding it will be held sometime before July 1, the start of next fiscal year.
“We do not currently have a signed agreement with the Fairhaven Fire Fighters Union,” she said. “Our goal is, and has been, to increase staffing in a fiscally responsible way. As we are still in negotiations with the union, that is all I can say.”
The town, of roughly 16,000 people, is seeking a $9 million budget for public safety, which would increase current funding by nearly $800,000, according to a document highlighting the proposed budget.
A handful of Fairhaven firefighters last week joined dozens others from other South Coast departments in battling a massive blaze at an apartment building in New Bedford. Two occupants died and five others were hospitalized.
Providing mutual aid meant the Fairhaven fire chief had to stay back at the town’s fire station to monitor the department’s dispatch, and off-duty firefighters were called for additional coverage, Gonsalves said.
“We don’t get paid 24 hours a day seven days a week to stand by because there may be an incident,” he said. “Relying on off-duty personnel to staff your fire department is, in my opinion, asinine.”
Leah Barrault, managing partner of Milton-based law firm Barrault and Associates, which represents the Fairhaven fire union, said Gonsalves’ department is far from the only one facing staffing challenges.
“Many towns will tell you that they have an inability to pay for additional fire staffing,” Barrault said in an email. “However, it is instead an unwillingness, not an inability to pay. … The public is being duped into believing they are safe.”
The staffing situation in Manchester-By-The-Sea has gotten so dire that the town administrator has floated the idea of training police officers to become volunteer firefighters. Residents in the small Cape Ann coastal town will vote at a town meeting Monday on a supplemental budget that allows more overtime funding so an adequate level of firefighters on duty can be restored.
“As a department, it has obviously put the guys through a lot of turmoil. Everyone has continued to be kind of on edge,” fire union vice president Bill Kenyon said in an interview Saturday.
Fall River fire union president Jason Burns said his department has around 190 firefighters, a level he called fine but hopes to see grow further. The department doesn’t rely on mutual aid as much as other municipalities across Bristol County and the Cape and Islands, a region he focuses on as vice president of District 8 for the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts.
“They struggle with manpower, but theirs is different, it’s probably more scary,” Burns said. “We are all struggling.”
In addition to a lack of funding, many fire departments are also grappling with an increased call volume as more and more people are fleeing the state’s urban areas and moving into the suburbs, PFFM President Rich MacKinnon Jr. said.
MacKinnon sees some elected officials reluctant to apply for federal grants that would help increase fire staffing levels because “they know they’ll have to properly budget moving into the future.”
“A lot of towns and cities will say ‘Well, if we get into a situation, we’ll just rely on our mutual aid agreements,’” he said. “You can’t rely on mutual aid anymore because they are going through the same staffing issues and lack of staffing that Fairhaven is going through.”
