NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Though talk of a state takeover has reduced to a whisper, the financial problems at the City of North Las Vegas have hardly resolved themselves. Next week, city leaders have scheduled a special meeting to review future budget shortfalls and skyrocketing overtime paid to the city's firefighters will be chief among the discussion.
In the first two and a half months of this fiscal year, the North Las Vegas Fire Department spent its entire annual overtime budget, not once, but more than two times over. While those figures have prompted some heated debate in recent weeks, the firefighters are unapologetic. To spend less, they say, would compromise public safety.
To maintain emergency services like medical response, the department currently spends more than $250,000 a month on overtime -- more than the city council allocated to the department's overtime budget for the entire year.
Chief Al Gillespie says it is entirely possible some of his firefighters may have made $15,000 in overtime in the last couple of months. He seems matter of fact about the figures, perhaps out of his own frustration at filling the same need with fewer resources.
"They're assuming that our firefighters are creating overtime spots so they can get more money, and that's just not true. What's true is we need to cover a certain number of spots and I need to bring people in to do that," he said.
In August, the department began browning out several units to provide for more flexible staffing, a move that satisfies union-mandated staffing levels while freeing positions to cover existing shortages. Yet between negotiation and implementation, the department lost roughly 10 percent of its staff, most to other local agencies.
"While we're not paying for the salaries, the salaries are gone. Our overtime has maintained, so effectively we're spending less money on personnel, but our overtime cost is not dropping," said Gillespie.
At a time when nearly every other city department has cut overtime budgets, City Councilwoman Anita Wood demands the firefighters do the same.
"We've got to take a hard line, in some cases, and this is going to be one of them. And we have not been good, or at least not good enough in the past at doing that and that has put us in a precarious position," she said.
Overtime spending at the department's current rate will create a minimum $3 million deficit in a city budget already projected to come up short.
"The reality is there is no money to pay it and we continue to put the city in the hole by continuing to pay, or we work out some kind of compromise. But that means we have to have flexibility on the part of the IAFF and on the part of the fire chief, and that's going to have to happen," said Wood.
The firefighter's contract with the city is good until 2015, so any solution will have to come with its cooperation. The union's most recent concessions expire in January and the city hopes it will once again return to the bargaining table.
