The Florida Times-Union
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — After stepped-up hiring of rank-and-file firefighters last year, a reshuffling of jobs in Jacksonville’s fire department is growing the number of chiefs and raising yearly payrolls more than $300,000.
Appointments this month to new district chief posts overseeing firefighter safety were a big part of the restructuring, in which 24 jobs as lieutenants were replaced by posts for 12 district chiefs and 12 captains.
Backers argue higher payroll costs can be offset by reducing injuries and expenses tied to medical leave.
“I believe it’s going to be cost-neutral at the end of the day,” said Fire Chief Martin Senterfitt. “…It doesn’t take many shoulder surgeries to pay for the cost of a safety officer.”
The exact cost for the changes isn’t clear, because fire employees’ salaries vary based on years in a given rank. But under pay scales used in the firefighter union’s contract, the price could range from $309,000 to more than $400,000 yearly. District chiefs are paid about $90,000 per year, while lieutenants start around $61,000 and captains start around $70,000.
Thirteen people were promoted this month to either permanent or provisional district chief appointments. Organization charts written last year showed 26 district chief posts in the agency.
Nine of the new chiefs’ jobs revolve around firefighter safety.
The jobs – some are called health and safety officers, others incident safety officers – have duties that include tracking injured firefighters’ rehabilitation, overseeing safety measures at some emergency scenes and promoting steps by firefighters to remain healthy.
The safety jobs have been mentioned in national fire codes for decades, and Jacksonville used to have those — at the rank of captain.
Those posts were eliminated during a series of budget cuts that started about 2011. Senterfitt said the choice to re-create the jobs was approved by Mayor’s Office administrators he reports to, but he had not talked to Mayor Alvin Brown.
But coming in the heat of a mayoral race, skeptics saw the choice through a political lens.
“We have an election in a month, and the timing is interesting,” said City Council President Clay Yarborough, who said an administrator in the Mayor’s Office wouldn’t sign off if the mayor objected.
He said neither Brown’s office nor the fire department had said anything about the promotions, and they should have.
“I can understand if they were making changes in one or two positions. But 24 is a significant change,” he said, and listed questions he’d want addressed about how the moves would affect the agency. “None of that information has been presented to us,” Yarborough said, adding Senterfitt had said during budget hearings he would advise members if the department’s spending didn’t go as planned.
Councilwoman Lori Boyer said the first time she heard about the promotions was from someone removed from City Hall who thought they were a trade-off to get firefighter support for Brown’s reelection.
The firefighters union expects to endorse someone for mayor, but won’t do that until members hold a vote, said union president Randy Wyse.
Wyse said he strongly supported re-creating the safety jobs, saying at one point: “I’ll defend that til the cows come home.”
He said the liquidated lieutenant jobs had been needed once to cover unplanned absences, but that had become less of a problem as the department moved to “appropriate staffing.”
And the promotions really aren’t a top subject for a lot of members, said Wyse, whose members all have a stake in pension legislation that Brown has pending with the council.
That doesn’t mean the promotions were inconsequential, though.
When the chief jobs were created, the captains at the top of a department promotion list moved into some of those spots, leaving their old jobs open for lieutenants who were ready to move up.
The fact that dozens of lieutenants’ slots were eliminated to create the higher ranks narrows avenues for lower-ranking firefighters and engineers to advance, and limits the total cost to taxpayers.
Senterfitt said he expected to reduce the department’s expenses on worker’s compensation through more attention to safety and wellness.
A city spokesman, David DeCamp, said Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Cleveland Ferguson signed off on the job-restructuring, which Senterfitt said he proposed last month.
City administrators expect the new jobs will “prove to be both operationally and financially wise over the long run,” DeCamp said by email. “We trust the expertise and judgment of Fire Chief Senterfitt.”
Records from the 1,200-employee department show six to 10 job injuries per week and nearly 100 people who are approved to use time away from work under the Family Medical Leave Act.
Others saw an ulterior motive.
“It just sounds awfully convenient from a political sense. Why now? The budget’s already been established for the year,” said Councilman Bill Bishop, who is challenging Brown for the mayor’s job.
“The last thing we want to do is have an unsafe operation. Absolutely, that’s paramount,” Bishop said. “There just seems to be something about this that’s above and beyond what we need to do.”
Boyer said she’ll want clear answers before addressing the next year’s budget, which is coming in a few months.
“I really went to bat for them,” she said.
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